“But I thought you were going out to a ranch.”
“That was before I met you,” Barth answered, with quiet directness.
Suddenly a change came over him. Throwing back his shoulders, he faced Nancy with a resolution which brought new lustre to his eyes, new lines of character into his boyish face. And Nancy, as she saw the change in him, trembled for the decision which, with infinite difficulty, she had long been fixing in her girlish mind.
“Miss Howard,” he asked abruptly; “do you believe in the Good Sainte Anne?”
Without speaking, Nancy let her hand rest lightly on the little silver image in the pocket of her coat. Then she nodded in silence.
“So do I,” Barth answered. “I am not a Catholic; still, I believe that the good lady has had me in her keeping, and I trust she may continue her care for me. Miss Howard, I am English; you are American, very American indeed. However, different as we are, I think our lives need each other. I had never thought,” he hesitated; then, cap in hand, he stood looking directly into her blushing face; “I had never supposed that my life could hold a love like what has grown into it. I dare not face that life without—Miss Howard,” he added, with a swift change to the simple boyishness which became him so well; “my life is all yours, to do what you like with. I shall try to meet your decision bravely; but I do hope you won’t throw me to one side, as of no use.”
But Nancy walked on without answering; and Barth, still cap in hand, moved on at her side.
“It began a long while ago,” he added at length. “I really think it must have started, that day at the shrine of Sainte Anne.”
Again Nancy’s hand caressed the little image in her pocket.
“I think perhaps it did,” she assented.