“Because you so kind unto me,” she said; “you touching my hand this way—so warm—so nize! Tha’s why I coon nod speag. Tha’s stop my heart.”
“I love you!” he said, the words escaping his lips almost without his volition. “I cannot help it. That was what I wanted to say to you to-day.”
She clung to his hands. Her lips parted. The color was wild in her face.
“Oh,” she said, “you love me! Tha’s a most beautifulest thought, Excellency. Mebbe also your God love me—jus’ me—also?”
He drew her into his arms and held her there a moment. He forgot everything else as he kissed her willing, questioning face and little hands. Then after an interval:
“What does it matter—what does anything matter now?” he said. “I love you. I know that you love me. Your eyes do not lie.”
When he released her, her hands fell limply on his knees.
“No one,” she said breathlessly, her eyes shining, “aever clasping me like thad.”
He laughed as joyously as she could. With his arm about her, as she knelt before him, he showed her the sheet of paper covered with his writing of her name.
“That,” he said, almost boyishly, “is how the Rev. Richard Verley wrote his sermon to-day—‘Azalea, Azalea, Azalea, Azalea—nothing but Azalea.’”