Merrington himself had followed, his senses tingling and his vision a blur. When they stopped, his heart flamed into words.
“Do you not see that it must be, because it is?” Resting both hands on the backs of the pews between which she stood, he held her prisoner.
She implored him silently.
“You think I am not in earnest, that I am impetuous, that I do not know you, do not know my own mind, perhaps. I did not need to know you as the social man knows women. At the first moment I spoke to you I knew what it had been that, ever since I first saw you, had filled me with a newness, a joy, a something that has no name because it underlies and embraces all things—love, love, the love of a soul for a soul, of a heart for a heart, of a man for the woman of all women for him. Jacqueline!”
He bent to see her averted face, but she held up her hand, entreating. He seized it in his own.
“That avalanche I spoke of the other night is started again. You did not stop it. You cannot stop it. If you do not hear me now, the moment will come at another time. It is the fulfillment of my being, to love you as you never dreamed of love, as no one else will ever love you, and to tell you so, over and over again, until it is music in your ears.”
He was close to her. In the gathering twilight of the church her face seemed very white, and she was watching his lips with a species of enchantment. She did not see the ardor in his eyes that made them glow as with fire, but as he ceased speaking, her lashes quivered and fell.
“I shall never give you up,” he whispered, his lips near her ear. “The bud comes no surer to the tree, the rose comes no surer from the bud, than my love will awaken love in you. Is it not so?”
The swift color darkened her face to the heavy shadow about her brow, and she pressed her hand against his breast resistingly. But at the touch he took her in his arms.
“Jacqueline,” he cried, “tell me that you love me.”