"But, sweetheart, tell me if, when you know me better, you do not find me all you think me now, what then? Will you hate me for very disappointment?"
He asked the question, but as if he believed in himself and the impossibility of her hatred or disappointment while he asked it.
She looked at him with naïve incredulity and surprise. It would have been a challenge to be kissed from any other woman, but Leam, with her fire and passion and personal reticence all in one, had no thought of offering such a challenge, still less of submitting to its consequences.
"Find you all I think?" she repeated slowly. "When I know the saints in heaven, will not they be all I think? Was not Columbus?"
"But I am neither a saint nor a hero," said Edgar, drawing a sprig of lemon-plant which he held in his hand lightly across her face.
"You are both," answered Leam as positively as she used to answer Alick about the ugliness of England and the want of flowers in the woods and hedges, and with as much conviction of her case.
"And you are an angel," he returned.
"No," said Leam quietly, "I am only the woman who loves you."
"Ah, but you must not depreciate yourself for my sake," he said. "My choice, my love, my wife, must be perfect for my own honor. You must respect me in respecting yourself, and if you were to say yes indeed you were an angel, that would only be what is due to me. Don't you see?" pleasantly.
"Yes," she answered. "And only an angel would be good enough for you."