“It is all right to climb if you wish,” he said. “I admire your spirit of independence as well as your fearlessness. You are a wholesome-minded girl; you will never be tempted to do anything unbecoming.”
As he stood idly tapping the leaves with his whip, a strange softening came over him against which he strove. He wanted to find some excuse to get on his horse and ride away without another word. He looked off toward the path along which he had come. At the turn of it was Aunt Chloe’s cabin, half hidden by a jungle of vines and stalks of great sunflowers. Festoons of white and purple morning-glories ran over the windows to the sapling porch around which a trellis of gourd vines swung their long-necked, grotesque fruit. Flaming hollyhocks and other bits of brilliant bloom gave evidence of the warm native taste that distinguished the negro of the old regime. The sun flaring with blinding brilliancy against the white-washed fence made him turn back to the shade where he could see only Dorothy’s blue eyes, with just that mingling of love and pain in them; the sweet mouth a little tremulous, the color coming and going in the soft cheeks.
“And a cocktail with the cherry will be perfect.” He had almost forgotten to take up the conversation where she had left off. “But your dear labor has brought a questionable reward. You will remember the cherry was the one thing lacking to make me yours?”
“Oh, yes!” her face lightening with a sudden recollection. “Now you do belong to us.”
“If ‘us’ means you, I grant you that I have been fairly and squarely won.”
Dropping his whip, Elliott leaned over and took Dorothy’s face between his hands bringing it close to his own, their hearts and lips together for one delicious moment.
“Dorothy, we belong to each other,” he said, gazing straight into her eyes.
She had been beautiful to him always, but loveliest now with the look of love thrilling her as he felt her tapering wrists close around his neck.
“It seems as though I have loved you all my life, Elliott.”
“Oh, if in loving me, the sweetness of you, the youth, the happiness should be wasted! Shall I always make you happy, I often ask myself. I want to know this, Dorothy, for I hope to make you my wife.”