"Aye, there is," she put in confidently, "there's love. You've tell't me the sang, many a time;--It's love that gar's the world gang round."
Was it? They stood at the gate together, she holding it open for him to pass, and the question came upon him suddenly. The old question which comes to most men. Was it worth it? Should he, or should he not, go the commonplace way of the world, and take what he could get? Yes, if he could take it without bringing something into his life for ever, which in all human probability he would not care to keep--for ever. Even memory was a tie; and yet--his heart beat quicker, and the knowledge that passion was beginning to disturb the balance of his reason came home to him, bringing with it the same quick denial with which he had met his own doubt as to the wisdom of the past. It was his way of defending the emotional side of his nature.
"Take care, Jeanie!" he said, seizing on the first commonplace detail which met his eye, "that gate is newly tarred; you'll dirty your hands."
For the first time the girl challenged him deliberately.
"I'm no carin'," she said defiantly, "my hands is used to dirt. I'm not like you. It'll no hurt me."
She closed the gate behind him sturdily, fastening the padlock, and then without another word turned to go. In so doing she roused in an instant all his obstinacy, all the imperious contrariety which would not tolerate the decision of another, even though it tallied with his own.
"Are you going without saying good-bye, Jeanie? That's rude," he began, stretching his hand over the gate, and once more wilfully provoking a situation. "Nonsense! The least you can do is to shake hands, and say thank you for all the benefits----"
He paused, and the next instant had vaulted over the gate and was kissing away her tears and calling everything to witness that he had not meant to be unkind, that she was the dearest little girl in creation. Both of which assertions were absolutely true to him at the time; she had looked too bewilderingly sweet in her sudden burst of grief for prudence.
For the next half-hour, if there be another motive power besides Love behind the veiled mystery of Life bidding the world go round, these two young people did not trouble themselves about it. The descending mists crept down to meet the shadows, the shadows crept up to meet the mists, but sea and sky and land were full of light for the boy and girl absorbed in the vast selfishness of passion. So lost in the glamour with which the great snare for youth and freedom is gilded, that neither of them thought at all of the probable ending to such a fair beginning. Jeanie, because to her this new emotion was something divine; Paul, because her estimate of it aided a certain fastidiousness which, in the absence of better motives, had served hitherto to keep him fairly straight. So, in a measure, the idyllic beauty of the position as they sate, side by side on a lichen-covered stone looking into each other's eyes, and supremely satisfied with each other's appearance, served to make Paul Macleod's professions more passionate than they would have been had she been less innocent.
It was not until with a wrench he had acknowledged that it really was time for her to be going home, and he was striding down the road alone, that a chill came over him with the question--