“Pole, Pole, stop! Let me alone—behave yore-se'f!” cried Mrs. Baker. There was a shuffling of feet then all was quiet.
Floyd leaned towards Cynthia till his lips almost touched her pink ear. “If you had met me that night what would have been my fate?” he asked, tremblingly.
Cynthia hesitated a moment longer, then she looked straight into his eyes and said, simply: “I was ready to go with you, Nelson. I'd thought it all over. I knew—I knew I'd be unhappy without you. Yes, I was ready to go.”
“Thank God!” Floyd cried, taking her hands and holding them tenderly. “And Hillhouse, you are not engaged to him, then?”
“Oh no. He was very persistent at Cartersville, but I refused him there for the last time. There is a rich old maid in the town who is dead in love with him and admires his preaching extravagantly. He showed me his worst side when I gave him his final answer. He told me she had money and would marry him and that he was going to propose to her. Do you think I could have lived with a creature like that, after—after—”
She went no further. Floyd drew her into his arms. Her head rested on his shoulder, his eyes feasting on her beautiful flushed face.
“After what?” he said. “Say it, darling—say it!”
“After knowing you,” she said, turning her face so that he could not see her eyes. “Nelson, I knew all along that you would grow to be the good, strong man you have become.”
“You made me all I am,” he said, caressingly. “You and Pole Baker. Darling, let's go tell him.”
Floyd walked home with Cynthia half an hour later and left her at the door. She went into her mother's room, and, finding the old woman awake, she told her of the engagement.