“One," said the recording secretary."Jesus wept," answered Leon promptly.There was not a sound in the church. You could almost hear the butterflies pass. Father looked down and laid his lower lip in folds with his fingers, like he did sometimes when it wouldn't behave to suit him."Two," said the secretary after just a breath of pause.Leon looked over the congregation easily and then fastened his eyes on Abram Saunders, the father of Absalom, and said reprovingly: "Give not sleep to thine eyes nor slumber to thine eyelids."Abram straightened up suddenly and blinked in astonishment, while father held fast to his lip."Three," called the secretary hurriedly.Leon shifted his gaze to Betsy Alton, who hadn't spoken to her next door neighbour in five years."Hatred stirreth up strife," he told her softly, "but love covereth all sins."Things were so quiet it seemed as if the air would snap."Four."The mild blue eyes travelled back to the men's side and settled on Isaac Thomas, a man too lazy to plow and sow land his father had left him. They were not so mild, and the voice was touched with command: "Go to the ant, thou sluggard, consider her ways and be wise."Still that silence."Five," said the secretary hurriedly, as if he wished it were over. Back came the eyes to the women's side and past all question looked straight at Hannah Dover."As a jewel of gold in a swine's snout, so is a fair woman without discretion.""Six," said the secretary and looked appealingly at father, whose face was filled with dismay.Again Leon's eyes crossed the aisle and he looked directly at the man whom everybody in the community called "Stiff-necked Johnny."I think he was rather proud of it, he worked so hard to keep them doing it."Lift not up your horn on high: speak not with a stiff neck," Leon commanded him.Toward the door some one tittered."Seven," called the secretary hastily.Leon glanced around the room."But how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity," he announced in delighted tones as if he had found it out by himself."Eight," called the secretary with something like a breath of relief.Our angel boy never had looked so angelic, and he was beaming on the Princess."Thou art all fair, my love; there is no spot in thee," he told her.Laddie would thrash him for that.Instantly after, "Nine," he recited straight at Laddie: "I made a covenant with mine eyes; why then should I think upon a maid?"More than one giggled that time."Ten!" came almost sharply.Leon looked scared for the first time. He actually seemed to shiver. Maybe he realized at last that it was a pretty serious thing he was doing. When he spoke he said these words in the most surprised voice you ever heard: "I was almost in all evil in the midst of the congregation and assembly.""Eleven."Perhaps these words are in the Bible. They are not there to read the way Leon repeated them, for he put a short pause after the first name, and he glanced toward our father: "Jesus Christ, the SAME, yesterday, and to-day, and forever!"Sure as you live my mother's shoulders shook."Twelve."Suddenly Leon seemed to be forsaken. He surely shrank in size and appeared abused."When my father and my mother forsake me, then the Lord will take me up," he announced, and looked as happy over the ending as he had seemed forlorn at the beginning."Thirteen.""The Lord is on my side; I will not fear; what can man do unto me?" inquired Leon of every one in the church. Then he soberly made a bow and walked to his seat.”

“You were dancing with Yuki and I looked at you. And you turned away and held her closer. Why did you do that? If you didn't want to hurt me, then why?"He looked away, as though he'd been slapped, but he didn't look guilty. He looked pained. "I closed my eyes," he said, his voice so low and strangled she could hardly hear him."What?" she asked, not understanding."Tamani held up a hand and Laurel realized he hadn't finished-he was having trouble speaking at all. "I closed my eyes," he repeated after a few shallow breaths, "and imagined she was you."He looked at her, his face open, his eyes honest, his voice a song of anguish.”

“But he would understand,” he said dazedly. “If we explained it to him. If we told him…he would understand.”She made her voice as cold as she could. As calm. “Told him what?”Will only looked at her. There had been light in his eyes on the stairs… And it was going now, fading like the last breath of someone dying. She felt as if she were watching the life bleed out of Will Herondale. “Jem would forgive me,” Will said, but there was hopelessness in his face, his voice, already. He had given up, Tessa thought. “He would,” she said, “He would never stay angry at you, Will; he loves you too well for that. I do not even think he would hold anger toward me. But this morning he told me he thought he would die without ever loving anyone as his father loved his mother, without ever being loved like that in return. Do you want me to go down the hallway and knock on his door and take that away from him? And would you love me still, if I did?”“Then…please, Tessa, don’t tell him what I just told you…”“I will tell no one,” she said. “I swear it…”

“In that case" Tessa said, feeling hot blood rise to her face,"I think I would prefer it if you called me by my Christian name, as you do with Miss Lovelace.Will look at her, slow and hard, then smiled. His blue eyes lit when he smiled. "Then you must do the same for me," he said. "Tessa."She had never thought about her name much before, but when he said it, it was as if she were hearing if for the first time-the hard T, the caress of the double S, the way it seemed to end on a breath. Her own breath was very short when he said, softly, "Will.""Yes?" Amusement glittered his eyes.With a sort of horror Tessa realized that she had simply said his name for the sake of saying it; she hadn't actually had a question.”

“He came up straight to her father, whose hands he took and wrung without a word - holding them in his for a minute or two, during which time his face, his eyes, his look, told of more sympathy than could be put into words.”

“I had my arms around his waist, smiling as I looked up at him. Being with Alex made me so completely happy, in an easy, uncomplicated way that I hadn't felt since I was a small child. "I love you," I said. In the five days we'd been there, it was the first time I'd said the words to him in English; they just slipped out.Alex's expression went very still as he looked down at me, his dark hair stirred by the slight breeze. I picked up a sudden wave of his emotions, and they almost brought tears to my eyes. Gently, he took my face in his hands and kissed me."I love you, too," he said against my lips.”