She took from her bosom a little flower that had been pinned there. It lay, a purple star, in the hollow of her hand. “It grew in the sun. It is the first flower of spring.” She put it to her lips, then laid it upon the window ledge beside my hand. “I have brought you evil gifts,—foes and strife and peril. Will you take this little purple flower—and all my heart beside?”
I bent and kissed first the tiny blossom, and then the lips that had proffered it. “I am very rich,” I said.
The sun was now low, and the pines in the square and the upright of the pillory cast long shadows. The wind had fallen and the sounds had died away. It seemed very still. Nothing moved but the creeping shadows until a flight of small white-breasted birds went past the window. “The snow is gone,” I said. “The snowbirds are flying north.”
“The woods will soon be green,” she murmured wistfully. “Ah, if we could ride through them once more, back to Weyanoke”—
“To home,” I said.
“Home,” she echoed softly.
There was a low knocking at the door behind us. “It is Master Rolfe's signal,” she said. “I must not stay. Tell me that you love me, and let me go.”
I drew her closer to me and pressed my lips upon her bowed head. “Do you not know that I love you?” I asked.
“Yea,” she answered. “I have been taught it. Tell me that you believe that God will be good to us. Tell me that we shall be happy yet; for oh, I have a boding heart this day!”
Her voice broke, and she lay trembling in my arms, her face hidden. “If the summer never comes for us”—she whispered. “Good-by, my lover and my husband. If I have brought you ruin and death, I have brought you, too, a love that is very great. Forgive me and kiss me, and let me go.”