“Perhaps what?” she inquired, and her beautiful eyebrows again went into the air.
“You will live with me, make a home for me, act sane instead of insane,” he said, shortly.
“What do you mean by getting away from my dead-and-alive surroundings?” she inquired.
“It means that after that ceremony to-morrow, which will make you feel neither maid, wife, nor widow, I want to take you away from here. You would like to travel?”
“To travel,—to see new places, new people? I, who have not even been allowed to go to Boston?” and she stretched out the flowing white sleeves of her gown, like wings. “What a question to ask me!”
“You could not travel,” he said, gloomily. “There were reasons.”
“I won’t believe there were reasons till I know them,” she said, obstinately. “You have kept me shut up here. You,—not poor papa and mamma,—until I am so tired of everything, so sick of the same old roads, the same old people, the same girls and boys, even the same sticks and stones. I began to think I was never to leave it. I was to stay here till I died, died, died.”
“Well, now is your chance.”
“I don’t wish any chance this way. I wish to go alone.”
He released the branch and threw himself down again on the seat. “You are going with me.”