flew at a canter.

It is easy to see that the Governor was not hurried headlong into
confession by that speech. But the crash came. It was the night before
Lindsay was to go back home to far-off Kentucky, and with infinite
expenditure of highly trained intellect, for which the State was paying
a generous salary, the Governor had managed to find himself floating on
a moonlit flood through the Forest of Arden with the Blessed Damozel.
That, at least, is the rendering of a walk in the McNaughtons' wood with
Lindsay Lee as it appeared that night to the intellect mentioned. But
the language of such thoughts is idiomatic and incapable of exact
translation. A flame of eagerness to speak, quenched every moment by a
shower-bath of fear, burned in his soul, when suddenly Lindsay tripped
on a root and fell, with an exclamation. Then fear dried beneath the
flames. It is unnecessary to tell what the Governor did, or what he
said. The language, as language, was unoriginal and of striking
monotony, and as to what happened, most people have had experience which
will obviate the necessity of going into brutal facts. But when,
trembling and shaken, he realized a material world again, Lindsay was
fighting him, pushing him away, her eyes blazing fiercely.

"What do you mean? What _do_ you mean?" she was saying.

"Mean--mean? That I love you--that I want you to love me, to be my
wife!" She stood up like a white ghost in the silver light and shadow of
the wood.

"Governor Rudd, are you crazy?" she cried. "You have a wife already."

The tall Governor threw back his head and laughed a laugh like a child.
The people away off on the porch heard him and smiled. "They are having
a good time, those two," Mrs. McNaughton said.

"Lindsay--Lindsay," and he bent over and caught her hands and kissed
them. "There isn't any wife--there never will be any but you. It was all
a joke. It happened because--Oh, never mind! I can't tell you now; it's
a long story. But you must forgive that; that's all in the past now. The
question is, will you love me--will you love me, Lindsay? Tell me,
Lindsay!" He could not say her name often enough. But there came no
answering light in Lindsay's face. She looked at him as if he were a
striped convict.

"I'll never forgive you," she said, slowly. "You've treated me like a
child; you've made a fool of me, all of you. It was insulting. All a
joke, you call it? And I was the joke; you've been laughing at me all
these we