He laughed, then became grave. “Why do you need so many men? You can’t marry but one.”
“Not in the South. But when I am ready to marry that one, I want it to be the one I want; and the only way to be sure is to have a great many wanting you. When a man sees a girl so surrounded with suitors that he can’t get near her, he knows it’s the one girl in the world for him. Aunt Lady had a saying about it, full of wisdom.” And Sylvia looked very wise herself. “‘Men are sheep!’”
“I see,” he said, somewhat grimly. “I fear, Miss Castleman, I cannot enter such a competition.”
“Is it cowardice?”
“Perhaps. It has been said that discretion is the better part of valor. You see, to me love is not a game, but a reality. It could never be that to you, I fear.”
Poor Sylvia! She was trying desperately hard to remember and make use of her training. But the rules she had learned were, so to speak, for fresh-water sailing; no one had ever thought that her frail craft might be blown out upon a stormy ocean like this. Picture her as a terrified navigator, striving to steer with a broken rudder, and gazing up into a mountain-wave that comes roaring down upon her!
He was a man who meant what he said. She had tried her foolish arts upon him and had only disgusted him. He was going away; and once he had left her, she would be powerless to get hold of him again!
Love could never be a reality to her, he had said. With sudden tears in her voice she exclaimed, “It could! It could!”
His whole aspect changed in a moment. A fire seemed to leap into his eyes. “You mean that?” he asked. And that was enough for her. As he moved towards her, she backed away a step or two. She thrust out the great bunch of golden-rod, filling his arms with that, and retreated farther into the yellow field.
He stood for a moment, nonplussed, looking rather comical with his unexpected load. Then he turned away without a word, and went to where his horse was fastened, and began to tie the flowers to his saddle.