"Awfully," said Loveland. As he spoke he smiled down at her in a friendly way; and the kindness in the blue, black-lashed eyes made the girl's heart flutter like an imprisoned bird. She had been in love with him since the first day, a little; then more and more. Now her love overflowed. It was too much for her emotional nature. She could not keep it back. And why should she try to keep it back, she asked herself, since her love must be considered an honour by this unsuccessful foreign adventurer? She felt that she was like a queen, laying down her crown at the feet of a handsome beggar—she, Alexander the Great's only daughter and heiress. There was no question in her mind but that her love would be welcomed.
"I'm glad," she almost sobbed. "Oh, you're worth more to me than anything in the world. I won't cry again if you ask me not. I'll do whatever you want me to. Pa'd 'most kill me if he knew I was talking like this. But I don't care—I don't care for anybody but you—no one else. Oh, suppose I'd let Pa make me marry Leo Cohen before I'd met you!"
Loveland was dumbfounded. "My dear girl!" he exclaimed. "You don't know what you are saying. You——"
"I do know," Isidora broke in. "I know you are poor, and in a lot of trouble, and you might have gone to prison. But you're a gentleman, all right. You're You, and that's enough. If you care about me same as I do about you, why, all the rest——"
"But I—I mean, I'm sure you—don't really care," stammered Val, checking himself on the verge of saying something rude.
It would have simplified matters if he had said it, for Isidora's opinion of her own high value as Alexander's rich, desirable daughter made it too easy for her to misunderstand.
"I do care. You needn't be afraid," she assured him. "I wouldn't have said a word—I'd o' waited for you to speak if things had been different, but I saw how you felt by the way your eyes looked a minute ago, and I wouldn't stop for manners, because, I says to myself, he's too much of a gentleman to tell a girl he loves her, when he's got nothing and she everything."
"I hope I am too much of a gentleman to——" Val began desperately, but she cut him short, with one little plump, Patchouli-scented hand over his mouth.
"I know it! That's what I said. You don't need to tell me," she hurried on. "We'll have to run away and get married. Then Pa'll forgive me. I'm all he's got. He couldn't bear me to want for anything. But it's no use asking him first. He——"
"Dear girl, I have no idea of asking him——"