“If I were free to do it, I’d make you want to,” he said.

She moved from him, walking rapidly into the deeper shelter of the willows.  The autumn sunlight, shining through the leafless boughs, cast a delicate netting of shadows over the brilliant fairness of her body.  He saw the rose of her cheek melting into the warm whiteness of her throat, which was encircled by two deliciously infantile creases of flesh.  To look at her led almost inevitably to the desire to touch her.

“Are you going without a word to me, Blossom?”

“I don’t know what to say—­you never seem to believe me.”

“You know well enough what I want you to say—­but you’re frozen all through, that’s what’s the matter.”

“Good-bye, Mr. Jonathan.”

“At what hour to-morrow, Blossom?”

She shook her head, softly obstinate.

“I mustn’t meet you again.  If grandma—­or any of the others found out they would never forgive me—­they are so stern and straight.  I’ve gone too far already, and besides—–­”

“Besides what?”

“You make me feel wicked and underhand.”

“Do you mean that you can walk off like this and never see me again?”

Tears came to her eyes.  “You oughtn’t to put it like that!”

“But that’s just what it means.  Now, darling, do you think you can do it?”

“I won’t think—­but I’ll have to do it.”

His nervous irritability became suddenly violent, and the muscles of his face contracted as if from a spasm of physical pain.

“Confound it all!  Why shouldn’t I marry you, Blossom?” he burst out.  “You’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen and you look every inch a lady.  If it wasn’t for my mother I’d pick you up to-day and carry you off to Washington.”

“Your mother would never give in.  There’s no use talking about it.”

“It isn’t her giving in, but her health.  You see, she has heart disease, and any sudden shock brings on one of these terrible attacks that may kill her.  She bears everything like an angel—­I never heard a complaint from her in my life—­not even when she was suffering tortures—­but the doctors say now that another failure of her heart would be fatal.”

“I know,” she admitted softly, “they said that twenty years ago, didn’t they?”

“Well, she’s been on her back almost all the time during those twenty years.  It’s wonderful what she’s borne—­her angelic patience.  And, of course her hopes all hang on me now.  She’s got nobody else.”

“But I thought Miss Kesiah was so devoted to her.”

“Oh, she is—­she is, but Aunt Kesiah has never really understood her.  Just to look at them, you can tell how different they are.  That’s how it is Blossom—­I’m tied, you see—­tied hand and foot.”

“Yes, I see,” she rejoined.  “Your uncle was tied, too.  I’ve heard that he used to say—­tied with a silk string, he called it.”