"But if you had ever signed words like these with any other woman, then it would not be our marriage nor our troth, would it, John Cowles?"
"No," I said. And, then I felt my face grow ashy cold and pale in one sudden breath!
"But why do you look so sad?" she asked of me, suddenly. "Is it not well to wait?"
"Yes, it is well to wait," I said. She was so absorbed that she did not look at me closely at that instant.
Again she took up the charred stick in her little hand, and hesitated. "See," she said, "I shall sign one letter of my name each week, until all my name is written! Till that last letter we shall be engaged. After the last letter, when I have signed it of my own free will, and clean, and solemn—clean and solemn, John Cowles—then we will be—Oh, take me home—take me to my father, John Cowles! This is a hard place for a girl to be."
Suddenly she dropped her face into her hands, sobbing.
She hid her head on my breast, sore distressed now. She was glad that she might now be more free, needing some manner of friend; but she was still—what? Still woman! Poor Saxon I must have been had I not sworn to love her fiercely and singly all my life. But yet—
I looked at the robe, now fallen loose upon the ground, and saw that she had affixed one letter of her name and stopped. She smiled wanly. "Your name would be shorter to sign a little at a time," she said; "but a girl must have time. She must wait. And see," she said, "I have no ring. A girl always has a ring."
This lack I could not solve, for I had none.
"Take mine," she said, removing the ring with the rose seal. "Put it on the other finger—the—the right one."