Almost sobbing, now, she left the sentence incomplete; and then: "Oh, you wouldn't dared act so to a bluegrass girl! But I know what's right as well as them. It don't take no book-learnin' to tell me as how a kiss like that you planned for me would be a sign that really you care for me no more than for the critters that you hunt an' kill for pastime up hyar among the mountings."
He would have given much if he had never done the foolish thing. He stood there with lowered eyes, bent head, abashed, discomfited.
"An' I 'lowed you were my friend!" said she.
Now he looked up at her and spoke out impulsively: "And so I am, Madge, really! I was ... wrong. Forgive me!"
She dropped her hands with a weary change of manner. "Well, I reckon I will," said she. "You've been too kind and good for me to bear a grudge ag'in you; but ... but ... Well, maybe I had better say good-night."
She walked slowly back across the bridge without another word, pulled on its rope and raised it, made the rope fast and slowly disappeared within her little cabin.
"Poor child!" said he, and turned away. "I was a brute to wound her."
As he went down the trail, darkening, now, as the moon slid behind the towering mountain back of him, his heart was in a tumult. "After all," he reflected, "education isn't everything. All the culture in the world wouldn't make her more sincere and true. She has taught me a lesson I shan't soon forget."
His thoughts turned, then, to the girl who would come up with the party on the following day.
"I—wonder! Was there ever, really, a time when I loved Barbara?... If so, that time has gone, now, never to return."