He had turned the light
upon himself then that she might see him for what he was and have no
fear. So he held it now, lifting it above his forehead. Hypnotized by
the compulsion of memory, she said, as she had said to the unknown
helper in the desert shack:
"I don't know you. Do I?"
"Io!"
"Ah! I didn't mean to say that. It came back to me, Ban. Perhaps it's
true. _Do_ I know you?"
As in the long ago he answered her: "Are you afraid of me?"
"Of everything. Of the future. Of what I don't know in you."
"There's nothing of me that you don't know," he averred.
"Isn't there?" She was infinitely wistful; avid of reassurance. Before
he could answer she continued: "That night in the rain when I first saw
you, under the flash, as I see you now--Ban, dear, how little you've
changed, how wonderfully little, to the eye!--the instant I saw you, I
trusted you."
"Do you trust me now?" he asked for the delight of hearing her declare
it.
Instead he heard, incredulously, the doubt in her tone. "Do I? I want
to--so much! I did then. At first sight."
He set down the lamp. She could hear him breathing quick and
stressfully. He did not speak.
"At first sight," she repeated. "And--I think--I loved you from that
minute. Though of course I didn't know.
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