"Well, if I don't tell Olive, then you must leave me here," said Verena,
stopping in the path and putting out a hand of farewell.

"I don't understand. What has that to do with it? Besides I thought you
said you _must_ tell," Ransom added. In playing with the subject this
way, in enjoying her visible hesitation, he was slightly conscious of a
man's brutality--of being pushed by an impulse to test her good-nature,
which seemed to have no limit. It showed no sign of perturbation as she
answered:

"Well, I want to be free--to do as I think best. And, if there is a
chance of my keeping it back, there mustn't be anything more--there must
not, Mr. Ransom, really."

"Anything more? Why, what are you afraid there will be--if I should
simply walk home with you?"

"I must go alone, I must hurry back to mother," she said, for all reply.
And she again put out her hand, which he had not taken before.

Of course he took it now, and even held it a moment; he didn't like
being dismissed, and was thinking of pretexts to linger. "Miss Birdseye
said you would convert me, but you haven't yet," it came into his head
to say.

"You can't tell yet; wait a little. My influence is peculiar; it
sometimes comes out a long time afterwards!" This speech, on Verena's
part, was evidently perfunctory, and the grandeur of her self-reference
jocular; she was much more serious when she went on quickly, "Do you
mean to say Miss Birdseye promised you that?"

"Oh yes. Talk about influence! you should have seen the influence I
obtained over her."

"Well, what good will it do, if I'm going to tell Olive about your
visit?"

"Well, you see, I think she hopes you won't. She believes you are going
to convert me privately--so that I shall blaze forth, suddenly, out of
the darkness of Mississippi, as a first-class proselyte: very effective
and dramatic."

Verena struck Basil Ransom as constantly simple, but there were moments
when her candour seemed to him preternatural. "If I thought that would
be the effect, I might make an exception," she remarked, speaking as if
such a result were, after all, possible.

"Oh, Miss Tarrant, you will convert me enough, any way," said the young
man.

"Enough? What do you mean by enough?"

"Enough to make me terribly unhappy."

She looked at him a moment, evidently not understanding; but she tossed
him a retort at a venture, turned away, and took her course homeward.
The retort was that if he should be unhappy