His lips laughed, but his eyes were grave.
"And when I came back to you with such trophies," he objected, "you would tell me that the railroads belonged to the people and that the electric light only served to illuminate my ugliness."
"And I should take it to wear on my forehead," she added. "What prophetic insight!"
"But 'going off' does not always mean railroads and electric light," he went on half seriously. "Suppose I came back poor, but honest, as they say?"
Laughter rippled on her lips. He watched the humorous tremor of her nostrils.
"Then I should probably kill the fatted chicken for you," she said.
There was a touch of bitterness in his answer. "Only in that case I should stay away." As he spoke he stopped to break off a drooping branch from a sweet-gum tree that grew near the road.
"You once called this your colour," he said quietly as he fastened the leaves on her horse's head. "There is no tree that turns so clear and so fiery."
Then, as she rode on with the branch waving like a banner before her, he laughed with a keen delight in the savage brilliance.
"You remind me of—who is it?" he asked—"'Clear as the sun and terrible as an army with banners.'"