“Come!” she said.

He followed her reluctantly.  Almost he hated the old stone knight which served her as a subject for so many fancies and feelings, and when she beckoned him to the spot where she stood beside the recumbent effigy, he showed a certain irritation of manner which did not escape her.

“You are cross with him!” she said, reproachfully.  “You must not be so.  He is the founder of your family—­”

“And the finish of it, I suppose!” he answered, abruptly.  “He stands between us two, Innocent!—­a cold stone creature with no heart—­and you prefer him to me!  Oh, the folly of it all!  How can you be so cruel!”

She looked at him wistfully—­almost her resolution failed her.  He saw her momentary hesitation and came close up to her.

“You do not know what love is!” he said, catching her hand in his own—­“Innocent, you do not know!  If you did!—­if I might teach you—!”

She drew her hand away very quickly and decidedly.

“Love does not want teaching,” she said—­“it comes—­when it will, and where it will!  It has not come to me, and you cannot force it, Robin!  If I were your wife—­your wife without any wife’s love for you—­I should grow to hate Briar Farm!—­yes, I should!—­I should pine and die in the very place where I have been so happy!—­and I should feel that he”—­here she pointed to the sculptured Sieur Amadis—­“would almost rise from this tomb and curse me!”

She spoke with sudden, almost dramatic vehemence, and he gazed at her in mute amazement.  Her eyes flashed, and her face was lit up by a glow of inspiration and resolve.

“You take me just for the ordinary sort of girl,” she went on—­“A girl to caress and fondle and marry and make the mother of your children,—­now for that you might choose among the girls about here, any of whom would be glad to have you for a husband.  But, Robin, do you think I am really fit for that sort of life always? —­can’t you believe in anything else but marriage for a woman?”

As she thus spoke, she unconsciously created a new impression on his mind,—­a veil seemed to be suddenly lifted, and he saw her as he had never before seen her—­a creature removed, isolated and unattainable through the force of some inceptive intellectual quality which he had not previously suspected.  He answered her, very gently—­

“Dear, I cannot believe in anything else but love for a woman,” he said—­“She was created and intended for love, and without love she must surely be unhappy.”

“Love!—­ah yes!” she responded, quickly—­“But marriage is not love!”

His brows contracted.

“You must not speak in that way, Innocent,” he said, seriously—­ “It is wrong—­people would misunderstand you—­”

Her eyes lightened, and she smiled.

“Yes!—­I’m sure ‘people’ would!” she answered—­“But ‘people’ don’t matter—­to me.  It is truth that matters,—­truth,—­and love!”