Nancy stood entranced. She heard his slow words not because they seemed to have any meaning but because there was a grave rhythm to his speech which suggested peace of another kind from anything the painful stumblings of the human tongue could evoke; his speech went with the drowsy sound of the pines, the noise of falling water in the ravine. Why knit the brows in a feeble effort to conjure up peace when peace encompassed them, when it folded them in the hypnotic embrace of the sunshine, giving these transitory moments their eternal quality?
Herrick struggled to rouse himself.
"How shall we marry you, Nancy?" he asked abruptly. "What kind of husband do you want: 'Rich man, poor man, beggar man, thief'?"
What made that jingle come faintly back from the day when he first learned it? He really must stop this silly habit of letting outworn, long-forgotten phrases run through his mind. It was childish. "What kind of husband do you want, Nancy?"
The question cut shabbily into the passionless quiet of Nancy's trance. The sunlight and the wind seemed to have gone on and left her behind them. All that lovable outdoor world was receding as life itself might recede from a dying man. Frantic anxiety rent the girl's heart, a wish to rush out and call on all these things to wait, not to hurry so fast, lest she never again hear the birds singing or play with Edward through the brilliant hours of the morning.
"What kind of husband do you want, Nancy?"
"I don't know," she answered.
"Do you really want to be a nun?"
"I don't know."
Not even that could she answer.