Presently, in the stillness, the little bird began to sing its song, the descending chromatic chain of liquid notes, melancholy and happy; the song of his very soul, Aubrey felt, and that the bird said for him all that he could not say as, with head bent, he sat listening, the beloved presence beside him. She was part of the song; and in it, as they listened together, their very hearts were mingling. They knew each other, he felt sure, very well.
“How sweet!” she murmured, and he nodded, not able to look at her.
There was a silence, and then the bird sang again. He raises his eyes to hers now, and they turned to him and smiled. Her hand lay on the rough bark of the log, and his was near it. Was it her hand that responded to the unconscious appeal of his, or had he dared? He held it. That was the bewildering, the transcending fact.
“Oh, Miss Pickering! Miss Leila—Leila,” he stammered. “May I tell you? May I ask you? Can you care for me?”
Her eyes still smiled, if very gravely. “Do you really love me?” she murmured.
“Oh, Leila!” he repeated. The willow-wren still sang, but all the little chains of sound seemed to be woven into a mist about him, trembling, shining. He held her hand to his lips. He wished to kneel before her. This was Paradise.
“It’s so very sudden,” said Leila Pickering. “I never dreamed you cared till just now.”
“Ever since I saw you first—ever since I saw your eyes. It has been like the fragrance of my flowers at evening, like the moon rising on my flowers. I did not dare to hope—you so young, so lovely;—life before you.”
“I think we can be very happy together,” said Leila Pickering. “I knew you were a dear from the first moment I saw you, too.”
The willow-wren stopped singing now and flew away. In the distance, then, he heard the liquid, dropping notes, and they sounded very sad. His arm was around Leila Pickering, and she leaned her head on his shoulder, so that in an ecstasy of wonder he felt the warm brightness of her hair against his cheek. He had never heard her talk so much. She told him that she had had such a dull, horrid life, so poor, knowing such tiresome, second-rate people. And she did not get on at all well with her mother.