"You always say the perfect thing. Here are my hands again. Oh, you poor soul, you can't be half as happy as I am, for you have never been engaged to someone you did not love. Or have you?"
"No. I wish you would not talk about that man. Theresa, I've got a bad, black temper. I ought not to let you marry me."
"And I have a bright blazing one. There will be thunder and lightning among these hills. Do you think I am afraid of your tempers?" Her lips and her eyelids drooped, her grasp tightened, and she drew closer to him. He felt her body tremble. "I'm afraid of nothing but your love," she said; and at the words he crushed her to him so that she felt the hard and hurried beating of his heart and the fury of his kisses on her hair.
"Oh, my heather flower," he said—"my heather flower!"
And the water babbled by, and a bird hung with spread wings like a canopy above them, and the sheep cried to their young, and the wind blew a strand of Theresa's hair across Alexander's face—a strand of quivering gold, smelling of sun, and wind, and earth.
He took a deep strong breath, and put her from him. "We must go back," he said.
She looked quickly in his face "You are not thinking we should not feel like this?"
"No, my heart, no."
"Because it's what he wanted us to feel. Oh, he knew. How could he know so well? I am not ashamed of being happy, though he's dead. And this day, and the sunshine, and all the beauty of the hills, are much more my father than the one that's—that's lying on the bed. I'm sorry for your sadness, but, except that, I haven't any of my own. Oh yes, I feel as if I have just been born, and the world is new, too, and life is beginning for you and me, and we are going to do things! But, Alexander, it isn't only mothers who die in bearing children." She checked a sob, dropping her head to her knees, and, looking past her, Alexander watched the shadows on the hills.
"To-morrow Grace will come, and Uncle George. They wouldn't understand if we looked happy, would they? Nobody would understand that death could be so beautiful." She rose and stood beside him. "Alexander, why don't you speak to me?"