He turned their slow step toward a low rock in an open space near the water's edge, where no one could come near them unseen. "Would you let me say it if we were down in Dixie?" he asked. "Is it because you are so far from home?"
"No, Mr. Fair, I told you I really have no home. I'm sorry I did; I'm afraid it's led you to this, when everything I said—about taking myself into my own care and all—was said to keep you from it."
The lover shook his head. "You cannot. You must not. To be that kind is to be unkind. Sit here. You do not know exactly what I have to say; sit here, will you not? and while I stand beside you let me do both of us the simple honor to seal with right words what I have so long said in behavior."
Barbara hesitated. "O Mr. Fair, what need is there? Your behavior's always borne the seal of its own perfection. How could I answer you? If you only wanted any other answer but just the one you want, I could give it—the kindest answer in the world, the most unbounded praise—O I could give it with my whole heart and soul! Why, Mr. Fair"—as she sadly smiled she let him gaze into the furthest depth of her eyes—"as far as I can see, you seem to me to be ab-so-lute-ly fault-less."
The young man caught his breath as if for some word of fond passion, but the unfaltering eyes prevented him. As she began again to speak, however, they fell.
"And that's not because I can't see men's faults. I see them so plainly, and show so plainly I see them, that sometimes I wonder—" She left the wonder implied while she pinched lichens from the stone. He began in a tender monotone to say:
"All the more let me speak. I cannot see you put away unconsidered——"
She lifted her eyes again. "O! I know what I'm putting away from me; a life! a life wider, richer than I ever hoped to live. Mr. Fair, it's as if a beautiful, great, strong ship were waiting to carry me across a summer sea, and I couldn't go, just for want of the right passport—the right heart! If I had that it might be ever so different. I have no other ship ever to come in. I say all this only to save you from speaking. The only thing lacking is lacking in me." She smiled a compassionate despair. "It's not you nor your conditions—you know it's none of those dear ones who love you so at home—it's only I that can't qualify."
They looked at each other in reverent silence. Fair turned, plucked a flower, and as if to it, said, "I know the passion of love is a true and sacred thing. But love should never be all, or chiefly, a passion. The love of a mother for her child, of brother and sister for each other, however passionate, springs first from relationship and rises into passion as a plant springs from its root into bloom. Why should not all love do so? Why should only this, the most perilous kind, be made an exception?"
"Because," softly interrupted Barbara, glad of a moment's refuge in abstractions, "it belongs to the only relationship that comes by choice!"