“Stop a minute,” she said; and as he awkwardly drew rein she continued: “I've just heard about your father. Two men were talking over there by a fence on the side of the road and I listened. Oh, it is awful, awful! I am so sorry for you, for they say you loved him so much, an' were always so good to him.”
A strange sense of confused helplessness surged over Paul. As she looked up at him so frankly he feared that she would read in his face the fact that she had been in his mind almost constantly since their meeting that day in the meadow. This disturbed him, and also the realization that common politeness demanded some sort of reply in accord with the refinement of her easy expression of sympathy. But that was beyond him. He felt his blood beating into his eyes. She appeared like a spirit thing poised upon an evanescent cloud; not for him save in fancy, not for any boy outside of dreams. In sheer desperation, and under the intuition that he ought not to sit on his horse while she stood, he dismounted.
“Thank you, thank you.” He seemed to hear the words as if they were spoken by other lips than his own, and again he had the exquisite sense of nearness to her, which had so enthralled him before. A wondrous, delectable force seemed to radiate from her and play upon his whole enraptured being.
“I have never seen any one die,” she went on, “and they say you were there alone with him. Oh, how very sad, and you—you are not much older than I am. Sad things are coming to you very early. I wish I could say something, or do something, Paul, but I don't really know how. I'm just a girl. My mother seems to know what to say at such times, but I don't. Grief like this simply overpowers me. I feel as if—as if I must cry, I'm so sorry for you.”
He saw her pretty lips quivering, her glorious eyes filling, and he dug the toe of his worn shoe into the sand of the road. He was becoming conscious of the tattered appearance of his working-clothes, his saddleless horse, his rough, perspiring hands and cuffless wrists. How odd that she, who was so daintily dressed, so wholly detached from his sordid life, could stand talking to him so kindly, so intimately!
“You are very good—very!” he stammered. “Better than anybody else. If they were all like you it wouldn't seem so—so bad.”
“It may seem forward of me and bold,” Ethel returned, “for really we have only been together once before, and yet (I don't know how you feel)—but I feel, somehow, Paul, as if we were very old friends. I admire you because you are brave and strong. You are not like—like the boys in Atlanta. You are different (uncle says you are not afraid of anything on earth). You know a girl could not keep from wanting that sort of a friend. I don't mean that I'd want to see you hurt ever—ever; but it is nice for a girl to feel that she has a friend who would take any risk for her. My mother says I get a lot of notions that are not good for me out of novels. Well, I don't know how that is, but I like you, and I am very, very sad about your father. If I had not met you here I would have written you a note. Can you tell me when—when he is to be buried?”
He told her that the funeral would be at the village church the next day, and therewith his voice broke, and for the first time his heart heaved and his eyes filled.
“I wanted to know because I am going to send some flowers,” she said; and then, observing the signs of his emotion and his averted face, she suddenly and impulsively caught his hand and pressed it between both of her own. “Don't, don't cry!” she pleaded. “I couldn't stand to see it!” Her own lashes were wet and her sweet mouth was drawn tight. “Oh, I wish there was something I could do or say, but I can't think of a thing. Yes, there is one thing, and it must help, because the Bible and the wisest men say it will at such times. I have been praying for you, and I am going to keep on doing it. Paul, from what you said the other day, I suppose you—have never been converted?”
He shook his head, swallowed, but kept his face turned away, conscious that it was distorted by contending emotions.