“Sally,” said Sidney very gently, “you talk too much.”
For the first time in her life Sally blushed, and gathering up the apples and the parings departed abashed.
“You are not going in?” he said rising as Vashti stood up.
She held up her hands. “I must wash my hands,” she said, “and I want to rest a little.”
The slightest hint of fatigue or illness in the splendid creature before him always touched him strangely. It was like a sudden assertion of the human in something divine.
“Do,” he said; “and Vashti,” using her name with happy boldness, “you won’t forget your promise.”
“I never forget,” she said, simply and sweetly.
He stood bareheaded watching while she entered. Then looking about, he suddenly noticed that in the garden the summer flowers were overspent, the little battalion of ants tugged viciously at their victim, whose yellow and black had shone so gallantly in the sunlight as he lighted down to sip the apple juice. The whirr of the threshing machine made melancholy cadences which sighed through the trees; and all at once the whole scene darkened.
It was only that the sun had dipped beyond the house, and the crimson Virginia creeper seemed in the shadow to be more brown than red, two or three of its leaves fell desolately to the earth, as dreams die when hope is withdrawn.
And Sidney, with the fatuity of lovers, said, “She has taken the glow with her.”