"It is impossible—the sorrow of my life, but impossible!" He gave a sigh of perplexity.
"You think I am—or rather my life has made me—so unacceptable?"
"I am so artificial," she sobbed. "I should not be easily contented."
She thought of the little six-room house just across the swamp and beyond the bayou, near her aunt's handsome country place in Louisiana, and tried to see herself there—in a rocking-chair on the porch, or planting seeds in the turfed, star-shaped flower beds.
"You are no more artificial than a lydy of culchure should be," he asseverated. Then ensued a long pause during which she glanced at him as, with a frown of doubt and perplexity, he looked far away at the horizon line, and she winced to note his grace and perfect pose in riding, realising the tawdry life which this apotheosis of equestrianism comprehended and represented.
"If you care," he said, "and God bless you for the word, will we be happy apart?"
"Oh, no! no!" she said, with a gush of tears. "A great joy has knocked at my door, and I can't open to it, but must bar up, and draw the bolts, and—how can I be happy?"
He turned in the saddle and looked sternly at her.
"Are you promised—to—another? That Mr. Jardine, perhaps?"
She rejoiced to see the fires of jealousy fiercely kindling in his eyes. She burst into a peal of laughter.