“Well, Sam, what’s the matter?”

He was not quick either of thought or speech.  He answered: 

“Oh! nothin’.  Only——­”

“Only what?” she snapped.

“Won’t you go and take a walk by the Bluff?”

She threw down her book at once.  She liked exercise and fresh air, and always walked with pleasure by the lake.  Sam was to her such a nullity that she enjoyed his company almost as much as being alone.  She was ready in a moment, and a short walk brought them to the little open place reserved for public use, overlooking the great fresh-water sea.  There were a few lines of shade trees and a few seats, and nothing more; yet the plantation was called Bluff Park, and it was much frequented on holidays and Sundays by nurses and their charges.  It was in no sense a fashionable resort, or Maud would never have ventured there in company with her humble adorer.  But among the jovial puddlers and brake-men that took the air there, it was well enough to have an escort so devoted and so muscular.  So pretty a woman could scarcely have walked alone in Bluff Park without insulting approaches.  Maud would hardly have nodded to Sleeny on Algonquin Avenue, for fear some millionaire might see it casually, and scorn them both.  But on the Bluff she was safe from such accidents, and she sometimes even took his arm, and made him too happy to talk.  They would walk together for an hour, he dumb with audacious hopes that paralyzed his speech, and she dreaming of things thousands of miles away.

This evening he was even more than usually silent.  Maud, after she had worn her reverie threadbare, noticed his speechlessness, and, fearing he was about to renew the subject which was so tiresome, suddenly stopped and said: 

“What a splendid sunset!  Did you ever see anything like it?”

“Yes,” he said, with his gentle drawl.  “Less set here, and look at it.”

He took his seat on one of the iron benches painted green, and decorated with castings of grapes and vine leaves.  She sat down beside him and gazed out over the placid water, on which the crimson clouds cast a mellow glory.  The sky seemed like another sea, stretching off into infinite distance, and strewn with continents of fiery splendor.  Maud looked straight forward to the clear horizon line, marking the flight of ships whose white sails were dark against the warm brightness of the illumined water.  But no woman ever looked so straight before her as not to observe the man beside her, and she knew, without moving her eyes from the spectacle of the sunset, that Sam was gazing fixedly at her, with pain and trouble in his face.  At last, he said, in a timid, choking voice,

“Mattie!”

She did not turn her face, but answered: 

“If it ain’t too much trouble, I’d like to have you call me Miss when we’re alone.  You’ll be forgetting yourself, and calling me Mattie before other people, before you know it.”