The Harvester's laugh was short and sharp.
“She had nothing to give, Ruth! Talk about worm-wood, colocynth apples, and hemlock! What sort of husks would that be to offer a man who gave honest love? Lie to him! Pretend feeling she didn't experience. Endure him for the sake of what he offered her? Well I don't know how calmly any other man would take that proceeding, Ruth, but tell your friend for me, that if I offered a woman the deep, lasting, and only loving passion of my heart, and she gave back a lie and indifferent lips, I'd drop her into the deepest hole of my lake and take my punishment cheerfully.”
“But if it would make him happy? He deserves every happiness, and he need never know!”
The Harvester's laugh raised to an angry roar.
“You simpleton!” he cried roughly. “Do you know so little of human passion in the heart that you think love can be a successful assumption? Good Lord, Ruth! Do you think a man is made of wood or stone, that a woman's lips in her first kiss wouldn't tell him the truth? Why Girl, you might as well try to spread your tired arms and fly across the lake as to attempt to pretend a love you do not feel. You never could!”
“I said a girl I knew!”
“'A Girl you knew,' then! Any woman! The idea is monstrous. Tell her so and forget it. You almost scared the life out of me for a minute, Ruth. I thought it was going to be you. But I remember your debt is to be paid with the first money you earn, and you can not have the slightest idea what love is, if you honestly ask if it can be simulated. No ma'am! It can't! Not possibly! Not ever! And when the day comes that its fires light your heart, you will come to me, and tell of a flood of delight that is tingling from the soles of your feet through every nerve and fibre of your body, and you will laugh with me at the time when you asked if it could be imitated successfully. No, ma'am! Now let me help you to the cabin, serve a good supper, and see you eat like a farmer.”
All evening the Harvester was so gay he kept the Girl laughing and at last she asked him the cause.
“Relief, honey! Relief!” cried the man. “You had me paralyzed for a minute, Ruth. I thought you were trying to tell me that there was some one so possessing your heart that it failed every time you tried to think about caring for me. If you hadn't convinced me before you finished that love never has touched you, I'd be the saddest man in the world to-night, Ruth.”
The Girl stared at him with wide eyes and silently turned away.