Together they slowly walked along. With tenderness in his eyes he looked down upon her, and when he spoke, which he did from time to time, his voice was deep and heavy but with a mellowness in it. She addressed him as Mr. Taylor and asked him if he had been away. And he said that he had, but that was not a sufficient reason for the formality of Mister—his name was Jim. She looked up at him—and her eyes were so blue that they looked black—and admitted that his name had been Jim but that now it must be Mr. Taylor. She laughed at this but his face was serious.
"Why, I haven't called you Jim since——"
"Since I asked you to marry me."
"No, not since then. And now you know it wouldn't be right to call you Jim."
In his slowness of speech he floundered about, treading down the briars that grew along the edge of the road, walking with heavy tread but tenderly looking down upon her. "That ought not to make any difference," he said. "I knew you before you—before you knew anything, and now it doesn't sound right to hear you call me anything but Jim. It is true that the last time I saw you—seems a long time, but it wasn't more than a week ago—you said that you wouldn't marry me, and really the time seems so long that I didn't know but you might have changed your mind."
"No, not yet," she replied.
"No, I couldn't."
"Is it as bad as that?"
"It's worse; it would be impossible for me to change."