“Was I so dreadful?” I inquired.
“We must believe so, since I was afraid,” she answered, with her clear laugh.
I should have been glad to have her assure me that even at that time she had begun to love me, although nothing could have equalled the charm that her ignorance of her own heart then possessed.
“Whom did you love before me?” I asked.
“Before you? My mother, and my father and all this besides,” she answered, and stretched out her arms in a comprehensive gesture that her little riding whip accentuated.
“All this?” I repeated, not grasping her meaning.
“Yes, the trees, the little pond that is down there, the orchards, the meadows, and the whole sky that you see.”
I laughed as I listened to this catalogue.
“I am not jealous of them,” I said.
She looked about her at the forest, the luminous autumn forest which had contributed to the awakening of her spirit, and murmured: