“Oh, Helen!” he cried; “do you realize what you are saying to me? You know my whole life is wrapped up in you. Don't raise my hopes to-night unless there is at least some chance of my winning. If there is one little chance, I'll struggle for it all the rest of my life.”
“Do you remember,” she asked, looking at him, one side of her flushed face pressed against the vines—“do you remember the night you told me in the garden about that awful trouble of yours, and I promised to bear it with you?”
“Yes,” he said, wonderingly.
“Well,” she went on, “I went straight to my room after I left you and wrote to Mr. Sanders. I told him exactly how I felt. I simply couldn't keep up a correspondence with him after—Carson, I knew that night when I left you there in your gloom and sorrow that I loved you with all my soul and body. Oh, Carson, when I heard your voice in your glorious speech just now, and knew that you have loved me all this time, I was so glad that I cried. I'm the happiest, proudest girl on earth.”
And as they stood hand in hand, too joyful for utterance, the glow of his triumph lit the sky and the din and clatter, the song and shouts of those who loved him were borne to him on the breeze.