“Mavis,” he said, “I want you to marry me—­won’t you, Mavis?”

The girl showed no surprise, said nothing—­she only disengaged her hands, took his face into them, and looked with unwavering silence deep into his eyes, looked until he saw that the truth was known in hers, and then he dropped his face into her lap and she put her hands on his head and bent over him, so that her heart beat with the throbbing at his temples.  For a moment she held him as though she were shielding him from every threatening danger, and then she lifted his face again.

“No, Gray—­it won’t do—­hush, now.”  She paused a moment to get self-control, and then she went on rapidly, as though what she had to say had been long prepared and repeated to herself many times: 

“I knew you were coming to-night.  I know why you were so late.  I know why you came.  Hush, now—­I know all that, too.  Why, Gray, ever since I saw you the first time—­you remember?—­why, it seems to me that ever since then, even, I’ve been thinkin’ o’ this very hour.  All the time I was goin’ to school when I first went to the Blue-grass, when I was walkin’ in the fields and workin’ around the house and always lookin’ to the road to see you passin’ by—­I was thinkin’, thinkin’ all the time.  It seems to me every night of my life I went to sleep thinkin’—­I was alone so much and I was so lonely.  It was all mighty puzzlin’ to me, but that time you didn’t take me to that dance—­hush now—­I began to understand.  I told Jason an’ he only got mad.  He didn’t understand, for he was wilful and he was a man, and men don’t somehow seem to see and take things like women—­they just want to go ahead and make them the way they want them.  But I understood right then.  And then when I come here the thinkin’ started all over again differently when I was goin’ back and forwards from school and walkin’ around in the woods and listenin’ to the wood-thrushes, and sittin’ here in the porch at night alone and lyin’ up in the loft there lookin’ out of the little window.  And when I heard you were comin’ here I got to thinkin’ differently, because I got to hopin’ differently and wonderin’ if some miracle mightn’t yet happen in this world once more.  But I watched you here, and the more I watched you, the more I began to go back and think as I used to think.  Your people ain’t mine, Gray, nor mine yours, and they won’t benot in our lifetime.  I’ve seen you shrinkin’ when you’ve been with me in the houses of some of my own kin—­shrinkin’ at the table at grandpap’s and here, at the way folks eat an’ live—­shrinkin’ at oaths and loud voices and rough talk and liquor-drinkin’ and all this talk about killin’ people, as though they were nothin’ but hogs—­shrinkin’ at everybody but me.  If we stayed here, the time would come when you’d be shrinkin’ from me—­don’t now!  But you ain’t goin’ to stay here, Gray.  I’ve heard Uncle Arch say you’d never make a business man.  You’re too trustin’, you’ve been a farmer and a gentleman for too many generations.