"Oh, Ben--shall I be able to hold onto this?" she cried, flinging wide her arms, as if to embrace the winds of heaven.
"This what, lass?" he asked.
"This--this woman!" she answered, passionately, with her hands sweeping back to press her breast.
"No woman who wakes ever goes back to a girl again," he said, sadly.
"I wanted to die--and now I want to live--to fight.... Ben, you've uplifted me. I was little, weak, miserable.... But in my dreams, or in some state I can't remember or understand, I've waited for your very words. I was ready. It's as if I knew you in some other world, before I was born on this earth; and when you spoke to me here, so wonderfully--as my mother might have spoken--my heart leaped up in recognition of you and your call to my womanhood!... Oh, how strange and beautiful!"
"Miss Collie," he replied, slowly, as he bent to his saddle-straps, "you're young, an' you've no understandin' of what's strange an' terrible in life. An' beautiful, too, as you say.... Who knows? Maybe in some former state I was somethin' to you. I believe in that. Reckon I can't say how or what. Maybe we were flowers or birds. I've a weakness for that idea."
"Birds! I like the thought, too," replied Columbine. "I love most birds. But there are hawks, crows, buzzards!"
"I reckon. Lass, there's got to be balance in nature. If it weren't for the ugly an' the evil, we wouldn't know the beautiful an' good.... An' now let's ride home. It's gettin' late."
"Ben, ought I not go back to Wilson right now?" she asked, slowly.
"What for?"