And Andor, who had paused for that brief moment in his voluble talk, went rambling on.
"You know," he said, "that it's perfectly wonderful . . . this room, I mean . . . when I look round me I can hardly credit my eyes. . . . Just a week ago . . . you remember? . . . I sat just there . . . at the opposite corner of the table, and you had your low chair against the wall just here . . . and . . . and you told me that you were tokened to Erös Béla and that your wedding would be on the morrow . . . well! That was little more than a week ago . . . before your farewell feast . . . and I thought then that never, never could I be happy again because you told me that never, never could we be anything to each other except a kind of friendly strangers. . . . I remember then how a sort of veil seemed to come down in front of my eyes . . . a dark red veil . . . things didn't look black to me, you know, Elsa . . . but red. . . . So now I am quite content just to bide my time--I am quite content that you should say nothing to me--nothing _good_, I mean. . . . It'll take some time before the thought of so much happiness has got proper root-hold of my brain."
"Poor Andor!" she sighed, and turned a gaze full of love upon the sick man. Her heart was brimming over with it, and so the paralytic got the expression of it in its fullest measure, since Andor was not entitled to it yet.
"But just tell me for certain, Elsa . . . so that I shouldn't have to torment myself in the meanwhile . . . just tell me for certain that one day . . . in the far-distant future if you like, but one day . . . say that you will marry me."
"Some day, Andor, I will marry you if God wills," she said simply.
"Oh! But of course He will!" he rejoined airily, "and we will be married in the spring--or the early summer when the maize is just beginning to ripen . . . and we'll rent the mill from Pali bácsi--shall we, Elsa?"
"If I like!" he exclaimed. "If I like! The dear God love me, but I think that if I stay here much longer I shall go off my head. . . . Elsa, you don't know how much I love you and what I would not do for your sake. . . . I feel a different man even for the joy of sitting here and talking to you and no one having the right to interfere. . . . And I would make you happy, Elsa, that I swear by the living God. I would make you happy and I would work to keep you in comfort all the days of my life. You shall be just as fine as Erös Béla would have made you--and besides that, there would be a smile on your sweet face at every hour of the day . . . your hands would be as white as those of my lady the Countess herself, for I would have a servant to wait on you. And your father would come and live with us and we would make him happy and comfortable too, and your mother . . . well! your mother would be happy too, and therefore not quite so cantankerous as she sometimes is."