Baird chose to consider the speech propitious, and he ventured further. "I remember you gave me a definition of love, and then couldn't remember just what you'd said.... I've always remembered that definition of yours."
"I don't remember now what it was I said. I know, though, that I'm not wise about such things." She spoke with a quiver of feeling, and looked beyond him, at the sunset.
Baird did not dare to say one of the things that crowded to his lips. He decided to say, "Wisdom never proceeds from a vacant head, and what you said was a bit of wisdom. I haven't forgotten a word of it."
Ann moved restlessly. She made no reply, but Baird saw the color tinge her cheeks. He had purposely chosen the top step of the porch, for then he could look up into her face, and, surreptitiously, he could hold a bit of her dress. There was comfort in the contact. He felt queerly nervous, for it was so evident that he was not talking to the same girl who had thought aloud while she stared up at the stars. There was a disconcerting air of maturity about Ann.
Somewhere above them a locust started its song and Ann withdrew her eyes from the distance and looked down at Baird's steady upward gaze. "Do you hear that?" she asked.
Her look, veiled and troubled and at the same time observant of the changes the last weeks had wrought upon him, had no more connection with her question than Baird's eager gaze had with his answer. He had grown thinner, his cheek-bones more prominent and his jaw less heavy; he looked more nervously and less brutally forceful.
"That fellow's retiring late—they've been winding their watches under my window all afternoon." He replied, while his blue-gray eyes, alight and questioning, searched her face: "I went for a walk this morning, beyond the creek, to where they're cutting grain, and the grasshoppers were everywhere, grinding their legs as if getting ready for a busy summer. You know the big flat rock, down by the creek, in the woods near the Back Road? I found a tree-toad in the chinkapin bushes there, and two little red and yellow turtles in the creek. I brought them all home with me and played with them a while.... You see, I've been driven to nature for comfort—while I've been waiting for a sight of you."
Ann had grown dead white; her eyes had shifted to her lap, to her tightly clasped hands. "Locusts and grasshoppers coming so early mean—a dry summer—" she said with difficulty. Then more clearly, "I wanted you to come as soon as I was able—because I had to ask you something—" She stopped.
"Well?" Baird breathed.
She met his vivid look, shrank a little under it, but did not look away. "Mr. Baird, I know why you are staying here—an' I'm sorry. It's no use—I'll only hurt you more and more. You must go away."