d he
loved the girl with all his strength. _Did_ she care for him? He would
know now.

He stopped, clearing the dead leaves from a mossy log. "Will you sit
down?" he said with a certain stately grace which even his baggy,
homespun clothes and torn hat did not make absurd. "It _is_ my land, and
it would seem always different to me if you'd rest on it for a minute,
Miss Isabel."

Isabel sat down. The color glowed hot in her face, and her lips moved
unsteadily as she tried to talk. "The laurel blooms late in this gorge,"
she said. "Look at the bush by the rock."

But Cabarreux did not look at the laurel: he did not know what she said.
He stood immovable before her, his sultry eyes lazily reading her face.
There was deep quiet in the little valley, except when a fish leaped in
the water beside them or the call of a mocking-bird rang through the
woods. They had never before, as it happened, been quite alone together.
Now this great silence and solitude shut them in.

He stood erect at last with a long breath. "There is somethin' I've
wished to say to you for a long time," he began in his leisurely drawl.

She stood up pale and fluttering. If she were the man! If she could
speak! She would compel love, she would force confession by sheer
strength of words. But Cabarreux stood deferential, indolent. "I must go
home: it is late," she said, hurrying across the field.

"One moment, Miss Isabel. This will be my home," stopping by the porch
of the little house. "If you would only look at it or walk through it
once--just once! It will be something for me to remember--when you are
gone."

When she was gone? This was the last time. She went hesitatingly up on
to the porch, and stood in the empty room by the bare hearth, Cabarreux
beside her. Once or twice he tried to speak, but the words died on his
lips: when he gave her his hand as she went down the steps his fingers
were icy cold and trembled. Perhaps she guessed the pain that the man
felt at the time, and was quite willing that he should feel it. She
said coolly as they walked through the woods to the road, "It's quite a
pretty little house, and this is very good soil indeed. I shall think of
you as very comfortable here, Mr. Cabarreux, when I am in the North."

"When you are in the North? Great God! do you know what you are sayin'?
Stay! you shall hear me! It's a poor hovel--I know how wretched it looks
in your Northern eyes--but as I lay there this morning I was
planni