"How young?"
"You know when it was born, don't you? Very well, it is as many days old as I have been in love with you. Before that it was a muscle capable merely of sturdy friendship."
One day a packet came from New York for her. It contained two rings, one magnificent, the other a plain circlet. She kissed him rather shyly, wore both that evening, but not again.
"I am not ashamed," she explained serenely. "Folkways are now a matter of indifference to me. Civilisation must offer me a better argument than it has offered hitherto before I resign to it my right in you, or deny your right to me."
He knew that civilisation would lock them out and remain unconcerned as to what became of them. Doubtless she knew it too, as she sat there sewing on the frail garment which lay across her knee and singing blithely under her breath some air with cadence like a berceuse.
During the "Children's Hour" she sat beside him, always quiet; or if stirred from her revery to a brief
exchange of low-voiced words, she soon relapsed once more into that happy, brooding silence by the firelight.
Then came dinner, and the awakened gaiety of unquenched spirits; then the blessed evening hours with him.
But the last hour of these she called her hour; and always laid aside her book or sewing, and slipped from the couch to the floor at his feet, laying her head against his knees.