"I reckon I walked too far, right at the start," Jane managed to fish from her confused mind. "I’m going to be more careful in the future." "Well, you’d better," Sam opined. "You may not find folks as ready to invest in your burial outfit as they was to prevent you from needing one." XXXII The following morning, in her neatest dress and white sun-bonnet, Virginia walked to Wilson’s store to buy some sewing-thread. She was on her way back, and was traversing the most sequestered part of the road, where a brook of clear mountain water ran rippling by, and an abundance of willows and reeds hid the spot from view of any one approaching, when she was startled by Langdon Chester suddenly appearing before her from behind a big, moss-grown bowlder. "Don’t run, Virginia—for God’s sake don’t run!" he said, humbly. "I simply _must_ speak to you." "But I told you I didn’t want to meet you again," Virginia answered, sternly. "Why won’t you leave me alone? If I’ve acted the fool and lowered myself in my estimation for all the rest of my life, that ought to be enough. It is as much as I can stand. You’ve simply got to stop following me up." "You don’t understand, Virginia," he pleaded. "You admit you feel different since that night; grant the same to me. I’ve passed through absolute torment. I thought, after you talked to me so angrily the last time I saw you, that I could forget it if I left. I went to Atlanta, but I suffered worse than ever down there. I was on the verge of suicide. You see, I learned how dear you had become to me." "Bosh! I don’t believe a word of it!" Virginia retorted, her eyes flashing, though her face was deathly pale. "I don’t believe any man could really care for a girl and treat her as you did me that night. God knows I did wrong—a wrong that will never be undone, but I did it for the sake of my suffering mother. That’s the only thing I have to lessen my self-contempt, and that is little; but you—you—oh, I don’t want to talk to you! I want to blot it all—everything about it—from my mind." "But you haven’t heard me through," he said, advancing a step nearer to her, his face ablaze with admiration and unsatisfied passion. "I find that I simply can’t live without you, and as for what happened that awful night, I’ve come to wipe it out in the most substantial way a self-respecting man can. I’ve come to ask you to marry me, Virginia—to be my wife." "To be your wife!" she gasped. "Me—you—_we_ marry—you and I? Live together, as—"