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They would never be unsaid

‘Safe, Diana, in my love for you’

They were said! The words that had coh all the doubts and fears, all the turbulent eh like the desert sun burning over the golden dunes

Love—bright love

Love that blazed in the heavens

Blazed in him

Now and for ever

He folded her to hi arainst his, felt her clutch at hi sob in her throat

He let her weep against hiainst hers, ith her tears

‘Do you mean it? Oh, Nikos, do you mean it?’ Her voice was muffled, her words a cry

‘Yes!’

His ansas instant, his hugging of her fierce That wondrous e the truth The truth that had started to form out in the desert, under the stars with Diana—so beautiful, so passionate, so precious to him!—whose rejection of him had caused him so much pain

Pain he had er had to feel Because now he knew the e in him by its true name

‘I love you, Diana I love you And with all my heart I hope and pray that you will accept my love That you do not fear it or flee it! The love,’ his heart was in his voice now, heaved up to her, ‘I hope that you can share with ether ‘

She pulled away froth of his hands at her spine, her tear-stained face working At last she was free to say what she had so feared to say—even to herself What she had kept locked within her, terrified that she had brought about the very fate she had guarded herself against for so long The tor truth she had ad it until that fateful day when, with a simple question, it had been prised from her