"I can tell." He raised himself on his elbow to watch her face. She knew that he expected to see the maiden's bashful happiness upon it, and the difference between his fond imaginings and the actual facts sickened her with an intolerable sense of deception. She could never tell him, never strike out of him his glad conviction of her contentment.
"We're going back to the Golden Age, you and I, and David. We'll live as we want, not the way other people want us to. When we get to California we'll build a house somewhere by a river and we'll plant our seeds and have vines growing over it and a garden in the front, and Daddy John will break Julia's spirit and harness her to the plow. Then when the house gets too small—houses have a way of doing that—I'll build a little cabin by the edge of the river, and you and David will have the house to yourselves where the old, white-headed doctor won't be in the way."
He smiled for the joy of his picture, and she turned her head from him, seeing the prospect through clouded eyes.
"You'll never go out of my house," she said in a low voice.
"Other spirits will come into it and fill it up."
A wish that anything might stop the slow advance to this roseate future choked her. She sat with averted face wrestling with her sick distaste, and heard him say:
"You don't know how happy you're going to be, my little Missy."
She could find no answer, and he went on: "You have everything for it, health and youth and a pure heart and David for your mate."
She had to speak now and said with urgence, trying to encourage herself, since no one else could do it for her,
"But that's all in the future, a long time from now."