Page:The Toll of the Bush.pdf/99

Put from you the consideration of the Old Testament, which is too hard for your understanding, and cling to the Saviour, in whose arms your doubts will pass like darkness before the sun.’

‘Ah!’ said Eve, her eyes shining, ‘when you talk to me like that my faith soars upwards; but afterwards the strength goes from its wings and down I come to the ground.’

He stood still, arrested by her words, and the whole expression of his countenance underwent a slow change. ‘Would you dwell for ever in that empyrean of belief?’ he asked at last.

‘How willingly!’ Eve replied.

‘Then link your life with mine, and it shall be my task and my delight to hold you there.’

The girl looked at him with puzzled eyes, then slowly the blood mantled in her cheeks and she drew involuntarily backwards.

‘Yes,’ he said, watching her; ‘this is a declaration of love, no less. I have argued and wrestled with and half convinced you; but in the process I have become wholly convinced myself.’

If Eve had been rosy before, she was pale now. All the light of exaltation raised by his words had faded from her eyes, leaving her face cold and impassive. Her first emotions were those of reproach and disappointment.

‘I do not know how to answer you, Mr. Fletcher,’ she said at last. ‘I suppose I ought to have seen what was in your mind, and perhaps you will hardly credit me when I say that I did not. I have never had the vaguest idea until a moment ago that you thought of me in that way.’

‘If one of us is to blame for that,’ said Mr.