"I saw Thomasine in New York. She's going to live with me as my secretary. You know that she has been a typewriter and stenographer for a long time, and they say she is an excellent one. She has been studying, too, other things at night, after her long hours. She is as pretty and sweet as ever. When you come, the three of us will do wonderful things together--" Miss Serena's bosom swelled. "I wonder when Ashendynes and Dales and Greens began to 'do things'--by which I suppose you mean going to theatres and concerts and stores and such things--together! The bottom rail's on top with a vengeance in these days! But your mother before you had no sense of blood." Hagar sat silent, with a feeling of despair. Then she began again, her subject the flower garden, and then, at last--"Aunt Serena, tell me about the story _you_ wanted to write...." Ralph--Ralph was too insistent, she thought. He found her the next morning, under the old sycamore by the river, and he proceeded again to be insistent. She stopped him impatiently. "Ralph, do you wish still to be friends, or do you wish me to put you one side of the Equator and myself on the other? I can do it." "The Equator's an imaginary line." "You'll find that an imaginary line can change you into a stranger." "Hagar, I'm used to getting what I set my heart and brain upon." "So was a gentleman named Napoleon Bonaparte. He got it--up to a certain limit." "I don't believe you are in earnest. I don't believe you have ever really considered--And I intend one day to make you see--" "See what? See my enormous advantage in marrying you? Oh, you--man!" "See that you love me." "How, you mean, can I help it? Oh, you--featherless biped!" Ralph broke in two the bit of stick in his hands with a snapping sound. "I'm mad for you, and I'd like to pay you out--" "You are more remotely ancestral than almost any man I know!--Come, come! let us stop this and talk as cousins and old playmates. There's Wall Street left, and who is going to be President, and what are you going to do with Hawk Nest." "What I wanted to do with Hawk Nest was to fix it up for you." "Oh, Ralph, Ralph! I should laugh at you, but I feel more like crying. The pattern is so criss-cross!" She rose from beneath the sycamore. "I'm going back to the house now." He walked beside her. "Do you remember once I told you I was going to make a great fortune, and you made light of it? Well, I'm a wealthy man to-day and I shall be a much wealthier one. It grows now automatically. And that I would be powerful. Well, I am powerful to-day, and that, too, grows." "Oh, Ralph, I wish you well! And if we don't define wealth and power alike, still your definition is your definition. And if that's your heart's desire, and I think it is, be happy in your heart's desire--until it changes, and then be happier in the change!" "I have told you what is my heart's desire." "I will _not_ go back to that. Look! the sumach is turning red."