“Why, Mother Peace!” exclaimed Anne, aghast. “How you talk!”
“It don’t sound pretty, does it?” said the widow; “but I believe it’s a fact. Something will happen now, you see if it don’t.”
Something did happen. Manuel, still white and inarticulate with rage, met Rachel in the garden, on his way to the house; Rachel in her red dress, with scarlet poppies in her hair and hands. She was waiting for him, perhaps; certainly, at sight of him, the color and light flashed into her face in a way that might have moved a stronger man than Manuel.
“Manuel!” she cried. “What’s the matter? what makes you look so queer? are you sick, Manuel?”
“Yes!” cried the man roughly. “I am sick! sick of this place, sick of these people. I am going away, back to the west, where a man can live without being watched and spied upon and stung by ants and wasps.”
“Going away! Manuel!” the poppies dropped from the girl’s hands, the rich color fled from her cheeks. “If you go,” she said simply, “I shall die.” Rachel had never learned to govern herself.
Well, after that there was only one way out of it—at least for a man like Manuel. Among all these cold, thin-blooded Eastern folk, here was one whose blood ran warm and swift and red like his own. No satin lily that a man dared not touch, but a bright poppy like those in her hair, fit and ready to be gathered. Yet when he passed the white lilies, with his arm round the girl, his promised wife—even while he looked down at the rapture of her face and thrilled at the thrill in her voice—the fragrance of the lilies seemed a tangible thing, like a thorn that pierced him.
At the garden door they parted. He had to see to the stock, he said; would Rachel tell Grandmother?