t of it? It never could have hurt you! Why
must you creep in like this to hear me and put me to shame? Oh, I love
you--I will say it, laugh as you will. Is it such a strange thing that I
should have a heart like other men? This will make sport for you! I, who
love you better than my life, better than any other man in the world
can love you, will be a jest to you all your life. I love you--and yet
I think I could hate you--you have destroyed my dream--you have done me
deadly wrong."

"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.

CHAPTER XXVI. UNCLE BLAIR COMES HOME

It happened that the Story Girl and I both got up very early on the
morning of the Awkward Man's wedding day. Uncle Alec was going to
Charlottetown that day, and I, awakened at daybreak by the sounds in the
kitchen beneath us, remembered that I had forgotten to ask him to bring
me a certain school-book I wanted. So I hurriedly dressed and hastened
down to tell him before he went. I was joined on the stairs by the Story
Girl, who said s