"Keeping your faith with your friends," said I. She nodded. "Do you think I am wicked to marry him this way? Won't you come, in after years, to despise me?"
For answer I stooped and kissed her. She put both her arms around my neck. "Please stay with me," she cried, "I do so need you. I just heard it to-day. It was why he came and stayed so long. Please stay and be with me till he leaves. Just stay with me, Little Brother, this time."
"Why," I said, "this time? Surely he will resent it. Any man would want this night of all others to be with you."
"Jack, you don't understand. I am miserable. That is why I rode Satan as I did. When I put him at that fence I hoped—it is wicked I know—but I hoped that he would kill me."
She was sobbing in my arms.
"Eloise, don't," I said; "let me go. Don't you know that it is harder on me than it is on you? Do you think I am made of stone—of wood—to come home expecting sweetness and find it all rue—my dreams about you—"
"Just to-night, Jack. You'll—you'll laugh at me when I say why, but, but, you know how punctilious these Englishmen are, and he thinks I must kiss him to-night when he goes."
I felt the hot blood rush to my heart. It was instinct, the reversion of a past ancestor who fought another man for kissing his wilderness bride.
"Eloise, you wouldn't?"
"If you'll kiss me again, Jack, as you did just now. I never felt so before—until—but it you'll kiss me again—that way, I'll never kiss him—never!"