The girl sprang to her feet with her chin defiantly high and her brown hands clenched into tight little fists. Her bosom heaved convulsively, and her eyes blazed through tears of anger. Her face was pale.
"Ye hain't!" she cried, in a paroxysm of fear and wrath. "Ye hain't a- goin' ter do no sich—no sich of a damn thing!" She stamped her foot, and her whole girlish body, drawn into rigid uprightness, was a-quiver with the incarnate spirit of the woman defending her home and institutions. For a moment after that, she could not speak, but her determined eyes blazed a declaration of war. It was as though he had posed her as the Spirit of the Cumberlands.
He waited until she should be calmer. It was useless to attempt stemming her momentary torrent of rage. It was like one of the sudden and magnificent tempests that often swept these hills, a brief visit of the furies. One must seek shelter and wait. It would end as suddenly as it had come. At last, he spoke, very softly.
"You don't understand me, Miss Sally. I'm not trying to take Samson away from you. If a man should lose a girl like you, he couldn't gain enough in the world to make up for it. All I want is that he shall have the chance to make the best of his life."
"I reckon Samson don't need no fotched-on help ter make folks acknowledge him."
"Every man needs his chance. He can be a great painter—but that's the least part of it. He can come back equipped for anything that life offers. Here, he is wasted."
"Ye mean"—she put the question with a hurt quaver in her voice—"ye mean we all hain't good enough fer Samson?"
"No. I only mean that Samson wants to grow—and he needs space and new scenes in which to grow. I want to take him where he can see more of the world—not only a little section of the world. Surely, you are not distrustful of Samson's loyalty? I want him to go with me for a while, and see life."
"Don't ye say hit!" The defiance in her voice was being pathetically tangled up with the tears. She was speaking in a transport of grief. "Don't ye say hit. Take anybody else—take 'em all down thar, but leave us Samson. We needs him hyar. We've jest got ter have Samson hyar."
She faced him still with quivering lips, but in another moment, with a sudden sob, she dropped to the rock, and buried her face in her crossed arms. Her slender body shook under a harrowing convulsion of unhappiness. Lescott felt as though he had struck her; as though he had ruthlessly blighted the irresponsible joyousness which had a few minutes before sung from her lips with the blitheness of a mocking- bird. He went over and softly laid a hand on her shoulder.