“That supreme happiness which is present everywhere when you and I are together. Be sure to come, darling. And now, once more, good-night!”
He galloped off, leaving Mell standing in the gateway, and on the uncomfortable side of a very knotty point. Did Jerome really love her? She believed he did—ardently. Did he love her well enough to surmount those difficulties of which he had spoken? Did he love her well enough to marry her?
“Aye, there’s the rub!” cried Mell. Her mind fairly swarmed with ugly suspicions, some of them as infinitesimal, and at the same time as dangerous as those microscopic bacteria which enter the physical laboratory, disorganizing, and, if not quickly eliminated, destroying the very stronghold of life itself. And as biological analysis was not yet, at that time, practiced as a method of research into the germs of things, Mell must needs fall back entirely upon inferential deductions.
Those difficulties, what could they be that she might not know them? If this tantalizing, and yet, withal, most fascinating, of created beings, truly loved her—loved her in love’s highest sense, and with no thought of deception, would he at every turn put her off with honeyed words and paltry evasions? Would he have said, “You must really consent to be guided blindly by my judgment in this matter,” if he valued her as she valued him?
Of one thing she was sure; she would be guided blindly by no human being, man or woman, in anything.
“No, I won’t!” she audibly informed the dew-damp lilies and the secretive rose, stamping her foot to impress it upon their understanding. Catch any wide-awake, thoroughly independent, altogether self-sufficient and splendidly educated American girl going it blind at any man’s behest! She would make short work of his courtship, and him too—first.
Still pacing distractedly up and down the garden path, Mell heard a window open, saw a head protrude, and heard a voice, which said:
“Send ’im ter his namesake, Mell. Let ’im git thar before he gits the better o’ you!”
“So he shall, father.”
“Then go ter bed.”