"But not so bad as it might have been," she added cheerfully. "You mean if I had not found you it would have been worse. Well, I'm glad that much good has come out of it. I have spared you a cold--so that goes down to my credit; otherwise--But what difference does it make?" he finished impatiently. "We must have met sooner or later even if I had run across the world instead of merely across a tobacco field. After all, the world is no bigger than a tobacco field, when it comes to destiny." "To destiny?" she looked up, startled. "Then there are fatalists even among tobacco-growers?" He met her question with a laugh. "But I wasn't always a tobacco- grower, and there were poets before Homer, who is about the only one I've ever read. It's true I've tried to lose the little education I ever had--that I've done my best to come down to the level of my own cattle; but I'm not an ox, after all, except in strength, and one has plenty of time to think when one works in the field all day. Why, the fancies I've had would positively turn your head." "Fancies--about what?" "About life and death and the things one wants and can never get. I dream dreams and plot unimaginable evil--" "Not evil," she protested. "Whole crops of it; and harvest them, too." "But why?" "For pure pleasure--for sheer beastly love of the devilment I can't do." She shook her head, treating his words as a jest. "There was never evil that held its head so high." "That's pride, you know." "Nor that wore so frank a face." "And that's hypocrisy." "Nor that dared to be so rude." He caught up her laugh. "You have me there, I grant you. What a brute I must have seemed this morning." "You were certainly not a Chesterfield--nor a Bolivar Blake." With a start he looked down upon her. "Then you, too, are aware of the old chap?" he asked. "Of Bolivar Blake--why, who isn't? I used to be taught one of his maxims as a child--'If you can't tell a polite lie, don't tell any.'" "Good manners, but rather bad morality, eh?" he inquired. "Unfortunately, the two things seem to run together," she replied; "which encourages me to hope that you will prove to be a pattern of virtue." "Don't hope too hard. I may merely have lost the one trait without developing the other."