But Cabarreux did not look at the laurel: he did not know what she said. He stood immovable before her, his sultry eyes lazily reading her face. There was deep quiet in the little valley, except when a fish leaped in the water beside them or the call of a mocking-bird rang through the woods. They had never before, as it happened, been quite alone together. Now this great silence and solitude shut them in.
He stood erect at last with a long breath. "There is somethin' I've wished to say to you for a long time," he began in his leisurely drawl.
She stood up pale and fluttering. If she were the man! If she could speak! She would compel love, she would force confession by sheer strength of words. But Cabarreux stood deferential, indolent. "I must go home: it is late," she said, hurrying across the field.
"One moment, Miss Isabel. This will be my home," stopping by the porch of the little house. "If you would only look at it or walk through it once—just once! It will be something for me to remember—when you are gone."
When she was gone? This was the last time. She went hesitatingly up on to the porch, and stood in the empty room by the bare hearth, Cabarreux beside her. Once or twice he tried to speak, but the words died on his lips: when he gave her his hand as she went down the steps his fingers were icy cold and trembled. Perhaps she guessed the pain that the man felt at the time, and was quite willing that he should feel it. She said coolly as they walked through the woods to the road, "It's quite a pretty little house, and this is very good soil indeed. I shall think of you as very comfortable here, Mr. Cabarreux, when I am in the North."
"When you are in the North? Great God! do you know what you are sayin'? Stay! you shall hear me! It's a poor hovel—I know how wretched it looks in your Northern eyes—but as I lay there this morning I was plannin'—plannin' how to make a palace of it for you—for you. Why, I'd work like a slave—"
He stopped short. Dave Cabarreux had never done an honest stroke of work in his life. Nothing but planning. He remembered that in this imminent moment, and laughed. "Miss Isabel, I've been a good-for-nothing dog: that's the truth. Everybody knows it: you know it. But there's a woman that I love who could put a new soul into my body. If she would."
They had halted by the fence now, and Isabel's hand was on the mossy rail. He put his own over it. "If she would? Isabel, do you care for me—at all?"
She looked up at the dark face full of tenderness and power. It seemed as if the gods were coming very close to her indeed. "Yes, I care for you," she said gently. "But I must go home—I must have time—I will not hear more to-day."
But she waited to hear more. He only stooped and reverently kissed her lips without a word. His brain reeled as it had done when he was going into battle in the Wilderness. He had never worked, but he would—to win her! He had not borne himself so badly in that other fight.