The Reverend Smith Boyd wasted not a minute in purposeless hesitation or idle preliminary conversation.
“Gail!” he said, in a voice which chimed of all the love songs ever written, which vibrated with all the love passion ever breathed, which pleaded with the love appeal of all the dominant forces since creation. Gail had resumed her seat on the end of the piano bench, and now he reached down and took her hand, and held it, unresisting. She was weak and limp, and she averted her eyes from the burning gaze which beamed down on her. Her breath was fluttering, and the hand which lay in her lap was cold and trembling. “Gail, I love you!” He bent his head and kissed her hand. The touch was fire, and she felt her blood leap to it. “Gail dear,” and his voice was like the suppressed crescendo of a tremendous organ flute; “I come to you with the love of a man. I come to you with the love of one inspired to do great deeds, not just to lay them at your feet, but because you are in the world!” He bent lower, and tried to gaze into the brown eyes under those fluttering lashes. He held her hand more tightly to him, clasped it to his breast, oppressed her with the tremendous desire of his whole being to draw her to him, and hold her close, as one and a part of him for all time to come, mingling and merging them into one ecstatic harmony. “Gail! Oh, Gail, Gail!”
There was a cry in that repetition of her name, almost an anguish. She stole an upward glance at him, her face pale, her beautiful lips half parted, and in her depthless brown eyes, alive now with a new light which had been born within her, there was no forbiddance, though she dropped them hastily, and bent her head still lower. She had made herself an eternal part of him just then, had he but seized upon that unspoken assent, and taken her in his arms, and breathed to her of the love of man for woman, the love that never dies nor wavers nor falters, so long as the human race shall endure.
He bent still closer to her, so that he all but enfolded her. His warm breath was upon her cheek. The sympathy which was between them bridged the narrow chasm of air, and enveloped them in an ethereal flame which coursed them from head to foot, and had already nigh welded them into one.