Arlia's mind maintained its rational functions until it registered the last four words in Nigel's sentence, upon which it seemed to lose that function entirely, reducing Arlia into an unintelligibly stammering woman with a face as red as a tomato. It took her a while to regain some measure of composure, but even then, her body felt jittery at best. "I-I... I-I... certainly d-didn't expect that..." she stammered, then tried her best to prove that she reciprocated his affection, which she turned out to crave quite strongly. "I love you too, Nigel. Perhaps I was being blissfully naive when I first became infatuated with you upon our first meeting, but now I see that there is a wisdom in it after all..."