"You promised to be his wife!" Forbes whispered, chokingly.
"Yes," she answered. "I—you see, I didn't know you. I didn't dream I should ever meet anybody who would—would thrill me—that's the only word—as you did, as you do. I didn't imagine that I should ever love as other people do—insanely, madly, dishonorably—anythingly to be with the one I loved. And I didn't dare give up Willie till I was sure I loved you, and when I was sure I loved you, I—it seemed so hateful even to mention his name. It would have been like—like this."
With her heel she pushed a rock into the water, and it thumped and splashed and curdled the little pool.
"That's the effect his name would have had on our moonlight, and I couldn't tell you then. Will you forgive me, or do you think I'm a hopeless rotter and a sneak?"
He smiled at her mixed vocabulary, and gathered her into his arms. "My love! My Persis! But you'll tell him now, won't you?"
"Oh, now, yes!" she cried, ecstatic as a comforted child. "You are glorious to forgive me so easily, and not be nasty and lecture-y. And see the pool; it's all smooth and clear again."
He looked, and held back the confession he was about to make in his turn. The mention of his poverty would be pushing another rock into the pool. And he wondered if the mirror would clear after that. He could forgive her her betrothal to Enslee because that was of the past; but the lack of money was not a matter for forgiving and forgetting; it was something to endure. It was asking love to accept poverty as a concubine or a mother-in-law.
He kept silent on that score, and they murmured their loves and kissed and laughed with contentedness purling through their hearts, and the world far away. She glanced back at the horses blissfully tearing young leaves from high branches.
"We ought to keep those horses as a souvenir of our engagement. It would be a pity to let any one else ride the dear old brutes, wouldn't it?"
"It would, indeed!" he said.