"It's once and for all," said Adam, "You'll never be to me what you were before. Is it the English-Canadian way to bring up women to kiss every comer?"
"I didn't kiss anybody but Louis Satanette," maintained Eva, "and I didn't really want to kiss him"
"Never mind," said Adam. "Don't trouble your butterfly soul about it." And he turned away and walked toward the tent.
"I'll not love you if you say such awful things to me," she flashed after him.
"Ye can't take the breeks off a Hielandman," he replied, facing about, "Ye never loved me. Not as I loved you. And it's no loss I've met, if I could but think it."
"Oh, Adam!" Now she ran forward and caught him around the waist. "Don't be so hard with me. I know I am very bad, but I didn't mean to be."
Some faint perception of that coarse fibre within her was breaking with horror through her face. She held to his hands after he had separated her from his person and held her off.
"All that you do still has its effect on me," said the man, gazing sternly at her. "I love ye; but I despise myself for loving ye. This morn I adored ye with reverence; this night you're as a bit o' that earth."
Eva let go his hands and sat down on the ground. As he made his preparations in the tent he could not help seeing with compassion how abjectly her figure drooped. All its flexible proud lines, were suddenly gone. She was dazed by his treatment and by the light in which he put her trifling. She sat motionless until Adam came out with one of the cots in his arms.
"I'm to sleep upon the hill in the pine woods to-night," said he. "Go into the tent, and I'll fasten the flaps. You shan't be scared by anything."