Ann reached for the shovel.
"Not yet," he said, taking her hand and moving his chair closer to hers. She did not try to withdraw her hand from the large one that held it.
For a moment he sat looking into the fire. Then he turned to her. "Ann," he said in a low voice, and unsteady, "Ann Rutledge, look at me. I have something to say to you."
Ann turned her face to his. For a moment he seemed to search it with a gaze as tender as it was masterful and as pleading as it was secure.
"We are goin' to cover the coals," he said. "Do you know, Ann, that hearts are hearthstones where women keep the live fire burnin'? My hearthstone has been ash-strewn and cold—with nobody to cover the coals?"
She felt the large hand around hers tighten its grasp, but he yet looked into the fire.
When he spoke again it was with a different tone. The pleading was gone. There was a tone of masterful security in it.
"Ann," he said, "we have been waitin' for a letter. It has not come. The time is now past when one or ten thousand letters refusin' to release you would avail anything. When a man loves a woman as I love you, it is his God-ordained privilege to get her. Do you understand? I love you. I have loved you since before I ever saw your face. It came to me the night I heard you singin' on the heights. I love you more than anything on earth or in heaven and I feel some way that love like this can come but once. I love you and I would give my life to have you mine—to cover the coals on the hearthstone of my heart."
There was such an intensity in his voice, in his face, as Ann had never seen. There was a pleading hunger, there was a suppressed mastery that she was conscious of. She did not take her eyes from his face. "Ann," and without letting go of her hand he arose and drew her up before him, "together we stand at the most momentous time of all our lives—do you love me?"
"Do I love you?" Ann half whispered with a smile that turned her face radiant; meantime her eyes grew shining with tears. The next instant she felt those long arms around her that Ole Bar had hinted would be useful in mating season, felt them binding her slender body so close she could hear the rapid thumping of his heart, and he kissed her with the savage joy of sweet possession, and, cradling her face in his strong hand, he held her cheek against his and breathed the fierce and tender joy words could not tell.