Lucina began moving slowly down the path towards the road; Jerome followed her. “I must go,” she said, with a gentle dignity, though she trembled in all her limbs. “I came across the fields from Aunt Camilla's. I left her asleep, and she will wake and miss me.”
“Oh,” cried Jerome, “I wish—” then he stopped himself. “Yes, she will, I suppose,” he added, lamely.
“He does not want me to stay,” thought Lucina, with a sinking of heart and a rising of maiden pride. She walked a little faster.
Jerome quickened his pace, and touched her shoulder. “You must not think about me—about this,” he murmured, hoarsely. “You must not be unhappy about it!”
Lucina turned and looked in his face sadly, yet with a soft stateliness. “No,” said she, “I will not. I do not see, after all, why I should be unhappy, or you either. Many people do not marry. I dare say they are happier. Aunt Camilla seems happy. I shall be like her. There is nothing to hinder our friendship. We can always be friends, like brothers and sisters even, and you can come to see me—”
“No, I can't,” said Jerome, “I can't do that even. I told you I could not.”
Lucina said no more. She turned her face and went on. She said good-bye quickly when she reached the road, and was across it and under the bars into the millet.
Jerome did not attempt to follow her; he stood for a moment watching her moving through the millet, as through the brown waves of a shallow sea; then he went back into the woods. When he reached the place where he had sat with Lucina he stopped and spoke, as if she were still there.
“Lucina,” he said, “I promise you before God, that I will never, so long as I live, love or marry any other woman but you. I promise you that I will work as I never did before—my fingers to the bone, my heart to its last drop of blood—to earn enough to marry you. And then, if you are free, I will come to you again. I will fight to win you, with all the strength that is in me, against the whole world, and I will love you forever, forever, but I promise you that I will never say this in your hearing to bind you and make you wait, when I may die and never come.”