ped when I saw how far she had jumped to her next speech.

"Then we two are all the people left in the world, John Cowles? When I
am old, will you cast me off? When another woman comes into this valley,
when I am bent and old, and cannot see, will you cast me off, and, being
stronger than I am, will you go and leave me?"

I could not speak at first. "We have talked too much," I said to her
presently. But now it was she who would not desist.

"You see, with a woman it is for better, for worse--but with a man--"

"With a Saxon man," I said, "it is also for better, for worse. It is one
woman."

She sat and thought for a long time. "Suppose," she said, "that no one
ever came."

Now with swift remorse I could see that in her own courage she was
feeling her way, haltingly, slowly, toward solution of problems which
most women take ready solved from others. But, as I thank God, a filmy
veil, softening, refining, always lay between her and reality. In her
intentness she laid hold upon my arm, her two hands clasping.

"Suppose two were here, a man and a woman, and he swore before those
eternal witnesses that he would not go away any time until she was dead
and laid away up in the trees, to dry away and blow off into the air,
and go back--"

"Into the flowers," I added, choking.

"Yes, into the trees and the flowers--so that when she was dead and he
was dead, and they were both gone back into the flowers, they would
still know each other for ever and ever and never be ashamed--would that
be a marriage before God, John Cowles?"

What had I brought to this girl's creed of life, heretofore always so
sweet and usual? I did not answer. She shook at my arm. "Tell me!" she
said. But I would not tell her.

"Suppose they did not come," she said once more. "It is true, they may
not find us. Suppose we two were to live here alone, all this
winter--just as we are now--none of my people or yours near us. Could we
go on?"

"God! Woman, have you no mercy!"

She sat and pondered for yet a time, as though seriously weighing some
question in her mind.

"But you have taught me to think, John Cowles. It is you who have begun
my thinking, so now I must think. I know we cannot tell what may happen.
I ask you, 'John Cowles, if we were brought to that state which we both
know might happen--if we were here all alone and no one came, and if you
loved me--ah, then would you promise, forever and forever, to love me
till death did us part--t