She drew her hand from his and in sudden dismay walked apart a few paces, saying, “Let me think for a minute, Jeff!” She dropped her riding skirt, whose fulness she had been carrying over one arm, and its long black folds swept around her slender figure as she leaned against a tree with her face in her hands. So tall and straight and slim she looked, drooping against the tree trunk, that the fancy crossed his mind she was like some forsaken, grieving wood nymph, and all his body ached with the longing to enfold her in his arms and comfort whatever pain was in her heart. But his love as well as his courtesy forbade him to intrude upon her while she stood apart, and he waited for her to turn to him again. Rhoda was thinking of what she knew was about to happen and of what it would mean to him. Her father had said that it would be like the sudden ringing of an alarm bell and that, however this initial attempt turned out, it might cause the whole South to take up arms at once and declare war. She knew how her lover’s spirit would leap at such an emergency. Did she wish to put his love and his promise to such a test at the very beginning? Slowly she walked back and stood in front of him. “Jeff, this is truly a wonderful proof of your love that you have given me!” Her voice was tremulous with desire of all she felt she was putting away, but she went bravely on: “I don’t believe any other woman ever had such proof! Indeed,” and she smiled tenderly at him, “I don’t believe any other woman was ever loved quite so much. It makes me feel your love in my heart, oh, so much more precious than even it was before! But I want you to be quite sure, dear Jeff!” “I am sure, sweetheart!” he broke in. “But won’t you wait a little while, two weeks, no, three weeks, before I--we decide? I ask you to go home, at once, and not to see me or write to me for three weeks more. And then you can let me know whether or not you still wish to put your ideals and ambitions aside for the sake of love. But I want you to consider the question then just exactly as if we had never talked of it before. You are not to feel yourself in the least bound by what you have told me to-day. If anything should happen between now and then that makes you feel that the South still has a claim upon you, anything that would make you in the very least unwilling to--to carry out this plan, then I want you to tell me so frankly--with perfect frankness, dear Jeff, as perfect as our love.” “And is that all the hope you will give me, dearest?” he pleaded. “No promise to take back with me?” She was standing beside the path, on the rising ground a little above him, and she leaned toward him, resting her hands lightly upon his shoulders as she said, her face all tenderness: “Dear Jeff, it is for your sake I am asking it!” He seemed scarcely to hear what she said, and touched her cheek with a caressing palm as he exclaimed, “Rhoda, my sweet, your face is like a guardian angel’s!”