"Oh, it was kind of you to get mamma and me a home here. It has been home. It has been so sweet. I love it—I shall always love it. It is big and free here for everybody. One can live here—one could live here if it were right. Colonel Blount is a splendid man, a grand man— "
"Yes?"
"Yes, yes, a splendid man."
"But you'll not stay here?" There was well-nigh as much eagerness as regret in his tone. She did not note it.
"No, I can not," she replied. "I can't tell you everything—I don't want to tell you everything. No one is to blame, I suppose. It's all because I have just grown up, and find I'm in the wrong place. I have been living along here just—just like one of the blacks out there in the fields—without—without taking thought. If it were honest, if I could do anything, if I belonged to any one and could feel that in some way I earned the right to—to—not take thought, then it would be different."
"That's what I say! That's as I want to have it," he began; but she would not listen.
"But it isn't right," she went on. "I can't tell you everything. I can't even tell you about Mrs. Ellison. Perhaps you have been deceived. Ask her. Go ask Colonel Blount, and he may tell you what he likes. But for me, just forget me. I couldn't love you—I couldn't love any one now. I am cold, all through."
The plaintiveness of her speech touched even this man. He held out his arms. "No, no," she cried, as she drew back. "I tell you, the world has gone to pieces. I must find a new one. I am not myself, I am lost; I don't know what I am." Again for a half-instant, touched as he was, Decherd went near to forgetting the lover. There was almost exultation on his face as he saw how fortune was now favoring him in his plans. There was nothing he wished so much as that Miss Lady might leave the Big House at once and for ever.
"I can't tell who I am!" the girl repeated, as though in an agony of entreaty. "I'm some one else! It's so strange. I must go—"
"But where would you go?" said he.