She heard him and started from her reverie With another half-dozen steps he was at her side.
"Don't look as if I had alarmed you," he said. "It seems such a poor beginning to what I have come to say."
Her hand trembled so that one or two of the loose violets she held fell at his feet. She had a cluster of their fragrant bloom fastened in the full knot of her hair. The dropping of the flowers seemed to help her to recover herself. She drew back a little, a shade of pride in her gesture, though the color dyed her cheeks and her eyes were downcast.
"I cannot—I cannot listen," she said.
The slight change which he noted in her speech touched him unutterably. It was not a very great change; she spoke slowly and uncertainly, and the quaint northern burr still held its own, and here and there a word betrayed her effort.
"No, no," he said, "you will listen. You gave me back my life. You will not make it worthless. If you cannot love me," his voice shaking, "it would have been less cruel to have left me where you found me—a dead man,—for whom all pain was over."
He stopped. The woman trembled from head to foot. She raised her eyes from the ground and looked at him, catching her breath.
"Yo' are askin' me to be yore wife!" she said. "Me!"
"I love you," he answered. "You, and no other woman!"
She waited a moment and then turned suddenly away from him, and leaned against the tree under which they were standing, resting her face upon her arm. Her hand clung among the ivy leaves and crushed them.
