"Please!" he said. "You ought not to go alone."
"Thank you; but first get your dinner. I don't want any. I have only just eaten my breakfast."
When they started out, half an hour later, the clouds had lifted somewhat, though they were still full of rain. They went through the barn-yard, climbed over the rail fence, and entered the near-by thicket, which stretched on into the sloping woodland of the mountains. The wet weeds and grass were already dampening her shoes, and, noting it, he paused suddenly.
"You really ought not to expose yourself this way," he protested. "Your feet will be soaked in a very short time."
"It doesn't matter," she said. "Nothing matters, Mr. Brown, but the fate that hangs over my brothers. I think I could wade in water up to my knees for days at a time and not be conscious of discomfort. It isn't one's body that feels the greatest pain, it is the mind, the soul, the memory. The pain comes from the futility of hoping. Life is a tragedy, isn't it?"
"Yes and no," he answered, smiling into her expectant, upturned face, the beauty of which had deepened under her gloom. "I have thought so at times, but there were always rifts in my clouds. There will be in yours."
"How sweet and noble of you!" she said, tremulously, in her emotion. Suddenly he saw that she was studying his face closely, feature by feature. Then she continued, as one rendering a verdict: "Yes, you have suffered. I see the traces of it. It lurks in the tone of your voice; it shows itself in your sympathy for me."
Without revealing his new-found passion for her, which surged within him like a raging torrent, there was nothing he could say. Presently they came to a brook several yards in width and he could see no means of crossing it. She was disturbed for a moment, but to her surprise he stepped into the shallow water, took the basket to the other side and, wet to his knees, came wading back to her.
"You must let me carry you across," he said, smiling.
"No, I'm too heavy." She shook her head.