The colour flushed up into Hazel's face, and went away again, but she gave neither word nor look.
'You are sorry?'
'Never ask such questions afterwards!' said Hazel. And she would have disengaged herself, but he would not let her. 'Do you not know better than that?'
'Hazel,' he said, gravely though full of tenderness,'you and I are not going to live to ourselves?'
Like a statue, so the girl stood; but with a rush of thoughts that for a minute she could not head off.
'He might live to mejust a little bit,' so they ran. 'That is what I shall do to him,under God,always!'Then tramp, tramp, came the words:
"The man was not created for the woman, but the woman for the man,"and if ever in her life Wych Hazel felt rebellious, she did so then. The old grievance of man's right of way,the fact that it was a right,but with it a softer feeling, hurt and sore, that he could even wish for anybody else but her on such a journey; that her right should not have come in there.
"The moon looks down on many brooks,
"The brook can see no moon but one!"
He might at least have consulted her. Suppose she had asked somebody?Wych Hazel drew half of a very long sigh, choked the rest back, then raised her grave brown eyes, and answered,