"Then were I poor indeed," replied Amanda.
"Yet I were poorer without yours," retorted Claude, "poorer than he who begs his bread. I wish I had to beg my bread for you, then richly should you fare; for who, when I should crave for love of you, (as mendicants ask alms for love of heaven), could then refuse me? Oh, refuse no longer my request. Estimate not my fortune, but appraise myself; and whatsoever you may deem to be my value, account your own worth as being ten thousand times that sum. Still take me, a mere miserable doit; an earnest, an instalment towards the payment of the debt of love and loyalty, that shall require a life to liquidate, then leave me bankrupt in untold arrears."
"I should forgive the debt, even before you could have asked forgiveness," replied Amanda, smiling, though much moved; "and yet I would not leave you perfectly absolved, but still retain you by some small reminder, some power of execution over you--not to be exercised towards you to your hurt--far from it, but I would be absolute that I might shew you mercy; even as noblest kings have been despotic, and in their day have delighted in dispensing pardon. So would I be towards you;--or even as the King of Kings--to speak it reverently--who, of His boundless goodness and free grace, remits the debts and manifold trespasses of us, his poor, defaulting creatures."
"Go on, for it is bliss to hear you," murmured Claude.
"Nay, I have done;--what have I said?" she quietly enquired of him.
"Would you unsay it?" he demanded eagerly.
"Only to say it again," she answered blushing,--"yet I fear I have babbled strangely;--but, remember, I was never wooed before, nor answered wooer; so, being a novice in love's archery, it may be that the gust of a too ardent breath has caught my words, and from my meaning wafted them awry."
"And can a fountain yield both bitter and sweet?" demanded Claude: "or are you as changeful as is yon waning moon?" he asked half chidingly.
"Rather consider me to be as is the sun, that knows no change of aspect throughout the livelong year; or, if it vary, swells its orb in winter," she observed, "even as I would now appear to you with fuller favor, amidst this young acquaintance's chilly prospect."