“No; we are the larks this morning.”
She was silent a moment, looking away toward the distant hills. Her voice had a tremor when she spoke again.
“John!”
“Yes!”
“Come to me; I want you.”
And he went up, to find her weeping.
Man, being a creature of tougher fibre, cannot always comprehend a woman’s moods. They may seem inexplicable to him, because her sensitiveness can be as fine as gossamer, and hardly visible against the coarser background of reality. Even as a man cannot always gauge the strange, shrinking prides of a shy child, so he may blunder against the delicate and sacred things of a woman’s soul, unless love, spiritual love, gives him that intuition that sees beyond the carnal clay.
“Why, Barbe—weeping!”
He looked at her, not a little troubled, searching his own heart guiltily, yet having no consciousness of having wounded her in any way. The tears of a woman whom he loves have always a personal issue for a man. They may pique him if he is vain, challenge him if he be honest.
“Oh, it is nothing, John!”