"I'll send you some pamphlets I've been reading." Her voice seemed to say the interview was ended, but Bradley did not go. He was struggling to speak. After a significant pause, he said in a low voice:
"I'd—I'd like to write to you—if you don't—mind."
Her eyes widened just a line, but they did not waver. "I should like to hear from you," she said cordially. "I'd like to know what you think of those pamphlets, which I'll surely send."
He had the courage to look once more into her brown eyes, with their red-gold deeps, as he shook hands. The clasp of her hand was firm and frank.
"Good-by! I hope I shall see you again. My address is always Des Moines, though I'm on the road a great deal."
Out into the open air again he passed like a man sanctified. It seemed impossible that he had not only seen her, but had retained his self-possession, and had actually dared to ask permission to write to her!
The red-gold sunlight was flaming across the snow, and the shadows stood out upon the shining expanse vivid as stains in ink. The sky, aflame with orange and gold clouds, was thrown into loftier relief by the serrate blue rim of trees that formed the western horizon. As he walked, he had a reckoning with himself. It could not longer be delayed.
He had been a boy to this day, but that hour made him a man, and he knew he was a lover. Not that he used that word, for like the farm-born man that he was, he did not say, "I love her," but he lifted his face to the sky in an unuttered resolution to be worthy her.
He had come under the spell of her womanly presence. He had seen her in her house-dress, and his admiration for her intellect and beauty had added to itself a subtle quality, which rose from the potential husbandship and fatherhood within him.
Now that he was out of her immediate presence, thoughts came thick and fast. Every word she had spoken seemed to have a magical power of arousing long trains of speculation. He walked far out into the quiet evening, walked until he grew calmer, and the emotion of the hour faded to a luminous golden dusk in his mind as the day changed into the beautiful winter night.