“Say that you love me!  Say that you love and will marry me!”

“I like you and I trust you, but I feel no more, Glenfernie, I feel no more!”

“It may grow, Elspeth—­”

Elspeth moved to the stem of the oak beneath which they had been seated.  She raised her arm and rested it against the bark, then laid her forehead upon the warm molded flesh in the blue print sleeve.  For some moments she stayed so, with hidden face, unmoving against the bole of the tree, like a relief done of old by some wonderful artist.  The laird of Glenfernie, watching her, felt, such was his passion, the whole of earth and sky, the whole of time, draw to just this point, hang on just her movement and her word.

“Elspeth!” he cried at last.  “Elspeth!”

Elspeth turned, but she stood yet against the tree.  Now both arms were lifted; she had for a moment the appearance of one who hung upon the tree.  Her eyes were wet, tears were upon her cheek.  She shook them off, then left the oak and came a step or two toward him.  “There is something in my brain and heart that tells me what love is.  When I love I shall love hard....  I have had fancies....  But, like yours, Glenfernie, their times are outgrown and gone by....  It’s clear to try.  I like you so much! but I do not love now—­and I’ll not wed and come to Glenfernie House until I do.”

“‘It’s clear to try,’ you said.”

Elspeth looked at him long.  “If it is there, even little and far away, I’ll try to bend my steps the way shall bring it nearer.  But, oh, Glenfernie, it may be that there is naught upon the road!”

“Will you journey to look for it?  That’s all I ask now.  Will you journey to look for it?”

“Yes, I may promise that.  And I do not know,” said Elspeth, wonderingly, “what keeps me from thinking I’ll meet it.”  She sat down among the oak roots.  “Let us rest a bit, and say no word, and then go home.”

The sunlight filled the hollow, the wimpling burn took the blue of the sky, the breeze whispered among the oak leaves.  The two sat and gazed at the day, at the grass, at the little thorn-trees and hazels that ringed the place around.  They sat very still, seeking composure.  She gained it first.

“When will your sister be coming home?”

“It is not settled.  Glenfernie House was sad of late years.  She ought to have the life and brightness that she’s getting now.”

“And will you travel no more?”

He saw as in a lightning glare that she pictured no change for him beyond such as being laird would make.  He was glad when the flash went and he could forget what it had of destructive and desolating.  He would drag hope down from the sky above the sky of lightnings.  He spoke.

“There were duties now to be taken up.  I could not stay away all nor most nor much of the time.  I saw that.  But I could study here, and once in a while run somewhere over the earth....  But now I would stay in this dale till I die!  Unless you were with me—­the two of us going to see the sights of the earth, and then returning home—­going and returning—­going and returning—­and both a great sweetness—­”