"The same plants grow on each side, Dent."
"There is one thing I have to tell you. If you are coming into our family, you ought to know it beforehand. There is a shadow over our house. It grows deeper every year and we do not know what it means. That is, my mother and I do not know. It is some secret in Rowan's life. He has never offered to tell us, and of course we have never asked him, and in fact mother and I have never even spoken to each other on the subject."
It was the first time she had even seen sadness in his eyes; and she impulsively clasped his hand. He returned the pressure and then their palms separated. No franker sign of their love had ever passed between them.
He went on very gravely: "Rowan was the most open nature I ever saw when he was a boy. I remember this now. I did not think of it then. I believe he was the happiest. You know we are all pantheists of some kind nowadays. I could never see much difference between a living thing that stands rooted in the earth like a tree and a living thing whose destiny it is to move the foot perpetually over the earth, as man. The union is as close in one case as in the other. Do you remember the blind man of the New Testament who saw men as trees walking? Rowan seemed to me, as I recall him now, to have risen out of the earth through my father and mother—a growth of wild nature, with the seasons in his face, with the blood of the planet rising into his veins as intimately as it pours into a spring oak or into an autumn grape-vine. I often heard Professor Hardage call him the earth-born. He never called any one else that. He was wild with happiness until he went to college. He came back all changed; and life has been uphill with him ever since. Lately things have grown worse. The other day I was working on the plan of our house; he came in and looked over my shoulder: 'Don't build, Dent,' he said, 'bring your wife here,' and he walked quickly out of the room. I knew what that meant: he has been unfortunate in his love affair and is ready to throw up the whole idea of marrying. This is our trouble, Pansy. It may explain anything that may have been lacking in my mother's treatment of you; she is not herself at all." He spoke with great tenderness and he looked disturbed.
"Can I do anything?" What had she been all her life but burden-bearer, sorrow-sharer?
"Nothing."
"If I ever can, will you tell me?"
"This is the only secret I have kept from you, Pansy. I am sure you have kept none from me. I believe that if I could read everything in you, I should find nothing I did not wish to know."
She did not reply for a while. Then she said solemnly: "I have one secret. There is something I try to hide from every human being and I always shall. It is not a bad secret, Dent. But I do not wish to tell you what it is, and I feel sure you will never ask me."
He turned his eyes to her clear with unshakable confidence: "I never will."