Sam faced her.
“He thinks your ideas absurd. I do not. I like them. I like you. I think you are beautiful. I do not know whether I love you or not, but for weeks I have been thinking of you and clinging to you and saying over and over to myself, ‘I want to live my life with Sue Rainey.’ I did not expect to go at it this way. You know me. What you do not know I will tell you.”
“Sam McPherson, you are a wonder,” she said, “and I do not know but that I will marry you in the end, but I can’t tell now. I want to know a lot of things. I want to know if you are ready to believe what I believe and to live for what I want to live.”
The horse, growing restless, began tugging at the bridle and she spoke to him sharply. She plunged into a description of a man she had seen on the lecture platform during her visit to the East and Sam looked at her with puzzled eyes.
“He was beautiful,” she said. “He was past sixty but looked like a boy of twenty-five, not in his body, but in an air of youth that hung over him. He stood there before the people talking, quiet, able, efficient. He was clean. He had lived clean, body and mind. He had been companion and co-worker with William Morris, and once he had been a mine boy in Wales, but he had got hold of a vision and lived for it. I did not hear what he said, but I kept thinking, ‘I want a man like that.’
“Can you accept my beliefs and live for what I want to live?” she persisted.
Sam looked at the ground. It seemed to him that he was going to lose her, that she would not marry him.
“I am not accepting beliefs or ends in life blindly,” he said stoutly, “but I want them. What are your beliefs? I want to know. I think I haven’t any myself. When I reach for them they are gone. My mind shifts and changes. I want something solid. I like solid things. I want you.”
“When can we meet and talk everything over thoroughly?”
“Now,” answered Sam bluntly, some look in her face changing his whole viewpoint. Suddenly it seemed as though a door had been opened, letting in a strong light upon the darkness of his mind. His confidence had come back to him. He wanted to strike and keep on striking. The blood rushed through his body and his brain began working rapidly. He felt sure of ultimate success.