“Silly boy,” said she, “you are not really going.”

“Am I not?  You’ll see.”

“But your father does not wish it, nor your mother.”

“I know that.”

“Then why go?”

“You ought to know.”

“Why, then?”

“Because you make me!”

“I don’t want you to go, Jack.”

“You said it.  You said that the folk in the country were fit for nothing better.  You always speak like that.  You think no more of me than of those doos in the cot.  You think I am nobody at all.  I’ll show you different.”

All my troubles came out in hot little spurts of speech.  She coloured up as I spoke, and looked at me in her queer half-mocking, half-petting fashion.

“Oh, I think so little of you as that?” said she.  “And that is the reason why you are going away?  Well then, Jack, will you stay if I am—­if I am kind to you?”

We were face to face and close together, and in an instant the thing was done.  My arms were round her, and I was kissing her, and kissing her, and kissing her, on her mouth, her cheeks, her eyes, and pressing her to my heart, and whispering to her that she was all, all, to me, and that I could not be without her.  She said nothing, but it was long before she turned her face aside, and when she pushed me back it was not very hard.

“Why, you are quite your rude, old, impudent self!” said she, patting her hair with her two hands.  “You have tossed me, Jack; I had no idea that you would be so forward!”

But all my fear of her was gone, and a love tenfold hotter than ever was boiling in my veins.  I took her up again, and kissed her as if it were my right.

“You are my very own now!” I cried.  “I shall not go to Berwick, but I’ll stay and marry you.”

But she laughed when I spoke of marriage.

“Silly boy!  Silly boy!” said she, with her forefinger up; and then when I tried to lay hands on her again, she gave a little dainty curtsy, and was off into the house.

CHAPTER IV.

THE CHOOSING OF JIM.

And then there came those ten weeks which were like a dream, and are so now to look back upon.  I would weary you were I to tell you what passed between us; but oh, how earnest and fateful and all-important it was at the time!  Her waywardness; her ever-varying moods, now bright, now dark, like a meadow under drifting clouds; her causeless angers; her sudden repentances, each in turn filling me with joy or sorrow:  these were my life, and all the rest was but emptiness.  But ever deep down behind all my other feelings was a vague disquiet, a fear that I was like the man who set forth to lay hands upon the rainbow, and that the real Edie Calder, however near she might seem, was in truth for ever beyond my reach.