Her name, spoken with so much ease, without a sign of self-consciousness, startled her. Her inquiring glance showed her that he was utterly unaware that he had spoken it. Her breath came quickly.
The birds sang and the stream sang, and suddenly her heart began to sing.
You see it had been so many years since Emily had known romance;—indeed, she had never known it—there had always been, in her mother's time, her sense of the proper thing, and her sense of duty, and her sense of making the best of things—and now for the first time in her life there was no make-believe. This was a world of realities, with Ulrich leading the way, his hands gathering flowers for her.
He stopped at last at the entrance of a sort of grotto where great ferns towered—at their feet was a bed of white violets.
"You see," he said, "I could not bring it. I came here this morning to pick the violets—for you—to let them say, 'I love you'—"
Even the birds seemed silent, and the little stream!
"And suddenly they spoke to me, 'Let her see us here, where you have so often thought of her. Tell her here that you love her—'
"How much I love you," and now she found her hands in his, "I cannot tell you. It seems to me that the thought of you as my wife is so exquisite that I cannot believe it will ever come to pass. And I have so little to offer you. Even my name is hated because it is a German name, and my old house is German, and my father—
"But my heart's blood is for America. You know that, and so I have dared to ask it, not that you will love me now, but that you may come to think of loving me, so that some day you will care a little."
The birds were singing madly, the streams were shouting—Emily was trembling. Nobody had ever wanted her like this—nobody had ever made her feel so young and lovely and—wanted—. She had had a proposal or two, but there had been always the sense that she had been chosen for certain staid and sensible qualities; there had been nothing in it of red blood and rapture.