There was a little loving reproach in these last words.
"Please take me home, now, Paul!"
They were close upon the return path around the Lake. A look of disappointed pain passed over Paul Rushleigh's features. This was hardly the happy reception, however shy, he had hoped and looked for. Still he hoped, however. He could not think she did not care for him. She, who had been the spring of his own thoughts and purposes for years. But, obedient to her wish, he touched his horse with the lash, and urged him homeward.
Paul helped her from the wagon at the little white gate at Cross Corners, and then they both remembered that she was to have gone to Lakeside to tea.
"What shall I tell Margaret?" he asked.
"Oh, don't tell her anything! I mean—tell her, I couldn't come to-night. And, Paul—forgive me! I do want so to do what is right!"
"Isn't it right to let me try and make you happy all your life?"
A light had broken upon her—confusedly, it is true—yet that began to show her to herself more plainly than any glimpse she had had before, as Paul's words, simple, yet burning with his strong sure love, came to her, with their claim to honest answer.
She saw what it was he brought her; she felt it was less she had to give him back. There was something in the world she might go missing all the way through life, if she took this lot that lay before her now. Would he not miss a something in her, also? Yet, must she needs insist on the greatest, the rarest, that God ever sends? Why should she, more than others? Would she wrong him more, to give him what she could, or to refuse him all?
"I ought—if I do—" she said, tremulously, "to care as you do!"