"Mustn't I?"
She tried to subdue her gladness.
"No; even though parting is more than I have courage to face."
She waited an instant for what was to follow, and then, "What? I—I didn't hear what you said."
"But there are some things," he went on, "that we must do without courage."
"Ethan"—she turned and faced him with a kind of fierceness like a creature at bay—"if you find you can do that, it will be because you don't care much."
"Don't care!"—his face came closer, his voice was so shaken out of its even cadences it sounded like a stranger's—"don't care! Do you know that I never in all my life knew what caring meant till I knew you? Do you know that I'd give everything I have on earth, and every other hope of happiness, just to be able to believe there is no barrier between you and me?"
He stopped. Val's heart was too full to speak on the instant. In the silence Wilbur's voice rang out clear at the bottom of the stairs:
"I say, Val, aren't you ever coming?"
Mrs. Ball asked Ethan to come in after their ride and have a cup of tea. He thanked her, and seemed to accept. They all went into the dim parlor, and when Mrs. Ball had drawn up the blinds old Mr. Ball was discovered asleep in the arm-chair. He woke at the noise, and blinked feebly.