“You know it is impossible,” he repeated, and put her from him.

Eugenia gathered herself together like one stunned.  “I must go,” she said breathlessly.  “I must go.”

Then she hesitated and stood before him, her hands on her bosom, a single spray of goldenrod clinging to her dress.

He folded his arms as he faced her.

“I have loved you all my life,” he said.

She bowed her head; her face had gone white.

“I shall always love you,” he went on.  “You may as well know it.  Men change, but I do not.  I have never really loved anybody else.  I have tried to love my family, but I never did.  When I was a little, God-forsaken chap I used to want to love people, but I couldn’t—­I couldn’t even love the judge—­whom I would die for.  I love you.”

“I know it,” she said.

“If you will wait I will work for you.  I will work until they let me have you.  I don’t mean that I shall ever be good enough for you—­because I shall not be.  I shall always be a brute beside you—­but if you will wait I will win you.  I swear it!”

She had not moved.  She was as still as the dead oak that towered above them.  The sunset struck upon her bowed head and upon the quiet bosom, where her hands were clasped.

“I will wait,” she answered.

He came nearer and kissed the hands upon her breast.  His face was flushed and his lips were hot.

“Thank you,” he said simply as he drew back.

In a moment he stooped to pick up the scattered goldenrod, heaping it into her arms.  “This is enough to fill the house,” he protested.  “You can’t want so much.”

He had regained his rational tone, and she responded to it with a smile.

“I never know when I’m satisfied,” she said.  “It is my weakness.  As a child I always ate candy until it made me ill.”

They crossed the field, the long plumes brushing against them and powdering them with a feathery gold dust.  At the fence she gave him the bunch and lightly swung herself over the sunken rails.  It did not occur to him to assist her; she had always been as good as he at vaulting bars.  Now her long skirts retarded her, and she laughed as she came quickly to the ground on the opposite side.

“One of the many disadvantages of my sex,” she said.  “The best prisons men ever invented are women’s skirts.  Our wings are clipped while we wear them.”

“It is hard,” he returned as he recalled her school-girl feats.  “You were such a mighty jumper.”

“Those halcyon days are done,” she sighed.  “I can never stray beyond my ‘sphere’ again.”