you know what love
means?"

"Yes."

"How?"

And now she looked at him. Her eyes were dark, her face deadly pale; her
lips were so red that in the whiteness they seemed the only trace of
colour.

"How do I know? Why because--nothing else matters. It seems like I've
been coming all my life to it--and now it just says: 'Here I am,
Nella-Rose--here'!"

"I, too, have been coming to it all my life, little girl. I did not
know--I was driven. I rebelled, because I did not know; but nothing else
_does_ matter, when--love gets you!"

"No. Nothing matters." The girl's voice was rapt and dreamy. Truedale
put his hands across the space dividing them and took hold of hers.

"You will be--mine, Nella-Rose?"

"Seems like I must be!"

"Yes. Doesn't it? Do you--you must understand, dear? I mean to live the
rest of my life here in the hills--your hills. You once said one was of
the hills or one wasn't; will they let me stay?"

"Yes"--almost fiercely--"but--but your folks--off there--will they let
you stay?"

"I have no folks, Nella-Rose. I'm lonely and poor--at least I was until
I found you! The hills have given me--everything; I mean to serve them
well in return. I want you for my wife, Nella-Rose; we'll make a
home--somewhere--it doesn't matter; it will be a shelter for our love
and--" He stopped short. Reality and conventions made a last vain
appeal. "I don't want you ever again to go out of my sight. You're mine
and nothing could make that different--but" (and this came quickly,
desperately) "there must be a minister somewhere--let's go to him! Do
not let us waste another precious day. When he makes you mine by
his"--Truedale was going to say "ridiculous jargon" but he modified it
to--"his authority, no one in all God's world can take you from me.
Come, come _now_, sweetheart!"

In another moment he would have had her in his arms, but she held him
off.

"I'm mighty afraid of old Jim White!" she said.

Truedale laughed, but the words brought him to his senses.

"Then you must go, darling, until White returns. After I have explained
to him I will come for you, but first let me hold you--so! and kiss
you--so! This is why--you must go, my love!"

She was in his arms, her lifted face pressed to his. She shivered, but
clung to him for a moment and two tears rolled down her cheeks--the
first he had ever seen escape her control. He kissed them away.

"Of what are you thinking, Nella-Rose?"

"Thinking? I'm not thinki