"South? And you with me?"
He smiled into her upturned face.
"Do you think it could be otherwise?" he asked. "Do you think we could be near—and not together?"
"I—I had not thought," she answered.
He held her hands, looking passionately at her fragile fingers.
"You are mine," he said—"mine as you have been no other man's. Nature has joined us together. Who can put us asunder?" Then he held her from him in sudden fear. "But—but can you face poverty again?" he asked.
"What will matter," she replied, "so long as we are together?"
"You will leave all this," he went on. "We will start afresh. We will have a farm in the South. It will be bare and comfortless."
She smiled.
"There will be peach-trees," she said, "all pink in the spring-time, and there will be the sound of cow-bells across green pastures."