The Love Story Of The Awkward Man

More Books

More by this Author

"Jasper! Jasper!" cried Alice, finding her voice. His anger hurt her with a pain she could not endure. It was unbearable that Jasper should be angry with her. In that moment she realized that she loved him--that the words he had spoken when unconscious of her presence were the sweetest she had ever heard, or ever could hear. Nothing mattered at all, save that he loved her and was angry with her.

"Don't say such dreadful things to me," she stammered, "I did not mean to listen. I could not help it. I shall never laugh at you. Oh, Jasper"--she looked bravely at him and the fine soul of her shone through the flesh like an illuminating lamp--"I am glad that you love me! and I am glad I chanced to overhear you, since you would never have had the courage to tell me otherwise. Glad-- glad! Do you understand, Jasper?"

Jasper looked at her with the eyes of one who, looking through pain, sees rapture beyond.

"Is it possible?" he said, wonderingly. "Alice--I am so much older than you--and they call me the Awkward Man--they say I am unlike other people"--

"You ARE unlike other people," she said softly, "and that is why I love you. I know now that I must have loved you ever since I saw you."

"I loved you long before I saw you," said Jasper.

He came close to her and drew her into his arms, tenderly and reverently, all his shyness and awkwardness swallowed up in the grace of his great happiness. In the old garden he kissed her lips and Alice entered into her own.