"Don't," she whispered huskily. "Don't talk to me! I don't know what I've done!"
"You've done," he answered for her, "just what yoh Pappy's been callin' on you to do;—just as I did once what my Granny called on me to do. I reckon we're quits, now!"
"Oh, no, Dale!" she suddenly cried, looking up at the clock. "It isn't right! Go, while you have a chance! Go! Go!" She even tried to push him toward the door. "Go somewhere and begin your lessons again, and make yourself big in spite of things! Go now, before they come after you!"
"I can't," he answered simply. "I wish I could. But that feller there," he pointed to a volume of Plutarch, "wrote that Cato said the soul of a lover lives in the body of another. How can I go?"
A tremor passed over her at his new, this personal attitude. It arose from no feeling of gratification, rather from a subtle repulsion. Yet so frantically was she seeking arguments to make him save himself, that she impulsively answered:
"But did we not also read of Kosciusko, who left his native Poland solely on account of love? And do you not know what a gallant soldier he made for freedom and humanity?"
"He loved just one," Dale murmured, waving his hand toward the shelves of books, "but my soul is in all of these."
A blush overspread her face for having momentarily misunderstood, but this was no time for embarrassments. He had not noticed it, and his voice was saying calmly:
"He was lucky enough to die fightin', for that's a heap easier'n the thickenin' of a rope, or the dry rot down in those stone walls. Still, every man's got to take his medicine, an' I'm goin' to swaller mine a-smilin'!"
"Dear Christ," she cried, pressing her hands to her cheeks and stepping farther back from him, "what have I done? Into what has this man turned?"