"Tell me just what has happened, Yasma," I said, when her sobbing had died down to a rhythmic murmuring. "What has happened—to make you so sad?"
To my surprise, she broke away, and stood staring at me at arm's length. Her eyes were moist with an inexpressible melancholy; there was something so pitiful about her that I could have taken her back into my arms forthwith.
"Oh, my friend," she cried, with a vehemence I could not understand, "why do you waste time over me? Have nothing to do with me! I am not worth it!" And she turned as if to flee again into the forest; but I seized her hand and drew her slowly back to me.
"Yasma! Yasma!" I remonstrated, peering down into those wistful brown eyes that burned with some dark-smoldering fire. "What has made you behave so queerly? Tell me, do you no longer care for me? Do you not—do you not love me?"
At these words, the graceful head sagged low upon the quivering shoulders. A crimson flush mounted the slender neck, and suffused the soft, well rounded cheeks; the averted eyes told the story they were meant to conceal.
Then, without further hesitation, my arms closed once more about her. And again she clung close, this time not with the unconscious eagerness of a child craving protection, but with all the fury and force of her impetuous nature.
A few minutes later, a surprising change had come over her. We had left the woods, and she was sitting at my side in a little glade by a brooklet. The tears had been dried from her eyes, which were still red and swollen; but in her face there was a happy glow, and I thought she had never looked quite so beautiful before.
For a while we sat gazing in silence at the tattered and yet majestic line of the forest, a phantom pageant whose draperies of russet and cinnamon and fiery crimson and dusty gold were lovely almost beyond belief. A strange enchantment had come over us; and we were reluctant to break the charm.
Yet there were questions that kept stirring in my mind; questions to which finally I was forced to give words.
"Tell me, Yasma," I asked, suddenly, "why have you been behaving so queerly? Why were you running away from me? Is there something about me that frightened you?"