“When you look and speak like that,” he said, “I feel as if I had done some brutal act. Come, be my happy, joyful sweet-heart again. Why, marriage is not a tragedy; not when there is love. Now, let us look about us just a moment, and then we will go home—to our own home together. Just see how sunny and beautiful everything is here. Was ever a sky more lovely? And the fields! What color can we call them?”
His arm was about her and she had recovered somewhat of her confidence.
“It is a purple world,” she said, “all purple and green to-day, Excellency.”
“Why, yes, it does seem so,” he said. “The skies are more purple than blue, and their very reflection seems to rest upon the fields to-day. Just look down there in the valley.”
“It is the purple iris and wistaria,” she said. “I so love them. Do they grow like that in America?”
“No, unfortunately.”
“And are not the skies purple there?” she asked.
“No-o. That is, not often.”
“Oh,” she said, with a sudden, unexpected vehemence, “I never want to go to that America. I love these fields so purple and so green—and those skies! Excellency, you will not take me away, will you?”
He was touched to the heart of him.