The circuit preacher felt the blood rush to his face. Anger, shame, mortification, remorse, and fear alternately strove with him, but above all and through all he was conscious of a sharp, exquisite pleasure—that frightened him still more. Yet he managed to exclaim:
“No! no! You cannot think me capable of such a cowardly trick?”
The girl started, more at the unmistakable sincerity of his utterance than at the words, whose full meaning she may have only imperfectly caught.
“A treek? A treek?” she slowly and wonderingly repeated. Then suddenly, as if comprehending him, she turned her round black eyes full upon him and dropped her fan from her face.
“And WHAT for you ask me to come here then?”
“I wanted to talk with you,” he began, “on far more serious matters. I wished to—” but he stopped. He could not address this quaint child-woman staring at him in black-eyed wonder, in either the measured or the impetuous terms with which he would have exhorted a maturer responsible being. He made a step toward her; she drew back, striking at his extended hand half impatiently, half mischievously with her fan.
He flushed—and then burst out bluntly, “I want to talk with you about your soul.”
“My what?”
“Your immortal soul, unhappy girl.”
“What have you to make with that? Are you a devil?” Her eyes grew rounder, though she faced him boldly.