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The scene in the square flashed back to him. The sea of faces turned up to his, the halting vehicles, the heads at windows, the raveling edges of the common crowd—he saw it all.

“I had never heard you make a speech before, you know,” she went on, “and I had always wished to—it was a splendid speech.”

“Yes,” he mused, and strangely for him, seemed not to have heard her praise, “yes, I saw you—I saw nothing but you. I thought of nothing but you!”

“Oh, Jerome,” she said, “I was happy and proud that minute to think——”

Suddenly he seized her, crushing her to him as if in some sudden access of fear.

“Dearest!” he said, “all this is nothing to me beside you and your love. Do you really love me so very much?”

“Oh, you know!” he heard her whisper.

“And will—always?”

“Always.”

“No matter what I did—or have done?”

“No matter,” she said; “you are—you. You are—mine.”

“Are you sure,” he persisted, somehow growing fierce, “sure—do you know what you are saying? No matter what I did, how unworthy I became, to what depths I sank”—even in that instant he was conscious of a dramatic quality in the situation, conscious of the eloquence, as it seemed to him, of his words—“to what depths of shame, of dishonor?”