“Us-all calls sweetheart—‘doney-gal’!”
“My—my doney-gal, then!”
“And”—the words came muffled, for Truedale was holding her still—“and always I shall see your face, now. It came to-day like it came long ago. It will always come and make me glad.”
Truedale lifted her from his breast and held her at arms’ length. He looked deep into her eyes, trying to pierce through her ignorance and childishness to find the elusive woman that could meet and bear its part in what lay before. Long they gazed at each other—then the light in Nella-Rose’s face quivered—her mouth drooped.
“I’m going now,” she said, “going till Jim White comes back.”
“Wait—my—”
But the girl had slipped from his grasp; she was gone into the misty, threatening grayness that had closed in about them while love had carried them beyond their depths. Then the rain began to fall—heavy, warning drops. The wind, too, was rising sullenly like a monster roused from its sleep and slowly gathering power to vent its rage.
Into this darkening storm Nella-Rose fled unheedingly. She was not herself—not the girl of the woods, wise in mountain lore; she was bewitched and half mad with the bewildering emotions that, at one moment frightened her—the next, carried her closer to the spiritual than she had ever been.