He spoke slowly, leaving intervals between the words.
"I won't have you ridin' with him, nor walkin' with him, nor with any man. If I'd known it, I'd put a stop to it before. Why, Dorcas, don't you know whose girl you are? You're mine."
Floods of color went over her face, and she looked down. Then, as he was silent, she had to speak.
"Newell," she said, "I only meant—I thought maybe I might help you—" There she had to look at him, and found his eyes upon her in a grave sweetness she could hardly understand. No such flower had bloomed for her in her whole life.
"Why, Dorcas," he said, "think how we've worked together! What do you s'pose we worked so for?"
Alida's name rose to her lips, but her tongue refused to speak. At that moment it seemed too slight a word to say.
"'Twas so we could find out where we stood," the grave voice went on. "That was it."
She felt breathless, as if they had together been pursuing some slight thing, a butterfly, a bubble, and now, when it was under their hands, they saw that the thing itself was not what mattered. It was the race. They had kept step, and still together now, they had run into a safe and happy place.
There was the beat of hoofs upon the road.
"Stay here," she breathed. "I can't go with him. I'll tell him so."