Then gathering her wits she repeated, “I have nothing to forgive, but everything for which to thank you. My starting you in the life intellectual cannot compare with your finding me hanging by a mere thread from a tall tree top and restoring me to the life physical, without which my brilliant intellectual attainments would have been as nothing,” she 196 ended gaily, breaking the tension which both had felt.
The talk continued to drift near the sacred realm of the heart, however, until the sanctity of engagement was finally touched upon.
“An engagement is to me a very sacred thing,” said Nancy with sweet seriousness, in response to something from Steve. “I have never understood how it could be lightly entered into with only the basis of a brief, gay acquaintance.”
Was not that just what she had done? “Oh, consistency, thy name is certainly not woman,” thought Steve bitterly. He said:
“Oh, yes, that is good theory, but it is generally overwhelmed by practice when a gay cavalier comes along and takes the maiden heart by storm.”
“Perhaps so, with some,” returned Nancy quietly, “but so far as I am concerned I do not believe I could be deceived into thinking that a brief, gay acquaintance was sufficient assurance for the binding of two in the tenderest tie of life, when their tastes and ideals might prove to be totally at variance.”
Steve’s heart leaped within him. Was she trying to tell him something,––to undeceive him with regard to Raymond and herself? Impetuous words rose and trembled on his lips, while the thought raced through his brain that it would not be dishonourable 197 to ask if there were the least hope for him. He would not utter another word if she said the sacred tie was already entered into with Raymond.
But Nancy, in the yielding and yet withdrawing which is characteristic of woman and man never fully understands, plunged into a new topic. Frightened at the plainness of her revelation and almost seeming to divine his purpose, with her brightest talk she led him far afield.
Steve, however, baffled though he was, found memory of that shy look coming back to him insistently, till he suddenly, firmly determined as they rode home once more that Nancy Follet should have the opportunity of accepting or refusing him before he left the place!