She cried out so loudly, so bitterly, that he stopped.

“If you say it—­if you say it now, Harlan, it will shame me so that I can never lift my eyes to yours again.  I realize what I have said.  It is I that have put the thoughts into your mind—­almost the words in your mouth.  Don’t speak to me now.  Oh, you can see how little I know—­what a fool I am, forward, shameless, ignorant about all that a girl should know!  Do not come near me—­not now!” He had started to come up the steps—­he was crying out to her.  “Oh, Harlan, don’t you understand?  Don’t you see that I can’t listen to you now?  I have driven you to say something to save my pride.  I say I have!  You are good and honest, and you pity me—­and my folly needs your pity.  But if you should tell me now that you love me, I’d die of shame—­I’d distrust that love!  I couldn’t help it—­and I’ve brought it all on myself.  Oh, my God, why have I grown up a fool—­why have I wasted the long days?”

She ran down past him.  He did not try to stay her.  He understood women not at all.  He obeyed her cry to be silent—­to keep away from her.

She turned to him when she reached the ground.

“I haven’t even known enough to understand how it stands between us.  Between us!” There was a wail in her voice.  She sobbed the rest rather than spoke it:  “That river out there is between us!  I don’t even belong to your country!”

She pointed at the great cross of the church-yard.  It stood outlined in the starlight.

“Religion stands between us!  My father and your grandfather are between us!”

She came back two steps, her face tear-wet, her features quivering with grief.

“But there’s something else between us, Harlan, blacker and deeper than all the rest.  Don’t try to cross it to come to me.  You will sink in it.  Fools for wives have spoiled too many men in this world.  I understand now!  Your grandfather knew.”  She raised her eyes, and crossed herself reverently.  “Mother Mary, help me in this, my temptation!”

She turned, and ran away, sobbing.

Harlan hurried a few steps after her, crying appeals.  But he did not persist.  Her passionate protests had come from her heart, he knew.  He did not dare to force himself on her when she was in that mood.

He sat down again on the church steps.  He remained there in deep thought until the red eyes in Dennis Kavanagh’s house blinked out.  He did not find it easy to understand himself, exactly.  His feelings had been played upon too powerfully to permit calm consideration.  He felt confident in his affection for her.  But her youth and the obstacles he understood so well put marriage so out of immediate consideration that he merely grieved rather than made definite plans for their future.  With moist eyes he looked up at the dark house on the hill and pledged loyalty to the child-woman, knowing that he loved her.  But that the love was the love that mates man and woman for the struggles, the prizes, the woes, and the contentment of life he was not sure—­for he still looked on Clare Kavanagh as more child than woman.