"So you are going away to-morrow, "he said at last; "and for good?" "For good, yes. I go abroad very unexpectedly for perhaps five years. My things aren't half ready, but business is of more importance than a woman's clothes." "Will you be alone?" "Oh, no." "Who goes with you?" he insisted bluntly. As she reddened, he watched the colour spread slowly to her throat and ear. "I am to be married, you know," she answered, with her accustomed composure of tone. His lack of gallantry was churlish. "To that dummy with the brown mustache?" he inquired. A little hysterical laugh broke from her, and she made a hopeless gesture of reproof. "Your manners are really elementary," she remarked, adding immediately: "I assure you he isn't in the least a dummy--he is considered a most delightful talker." He swept the jest impatiently aside. "Why do you do it?" he demanded. "Do what?" "You know what I mean. Why do you marry him?" Again she bit back a laugh. It was all very primitive, very savage, she told herself; it was, above all, different from any of the life that she had known, and yet, in a mysterious way, it was familiar, as if the unrestrained emotion in his voice stirred some racial memory within her brain. "Why do I marry him?" She drew a step away, looking at sky and field. "Why do I marry him?" She hesitated slightly, "Oh, for many reasons, and all good ones--but most of all because I love him." "You do not love him." "I beg your pardon, but I do." For the first time in her life, as her eyes swept over the landscape, she was conscious of a peculiar charm in the wildness of the country, in the absence of all civilising influences--in the open sky, the red road, the luxuriant tobacco, the coarse sprays of yarrow blooming against the fence; in the homely tasks, drawing one close to the soil, and the harvesting of the ripened crops, the milking of the mild-eyed cows, and in the long still days, followed by the long still nights. Their eyes met, and for a time both were silent. She felt again the old vague trouble at his presence, the appeal of the rustic tradition, the rustic temperament; of all the multiplied inheritances of the centuries, which her education had not utterly extinguished. "Well, I hope you'll live to regret it," he said suddenly, with bitter passion. The words startled her, and she caught her breath with a tremor. "What an awful wish!" she exclaimed lightly. "It's an honest one." "I'm not sure I shouldn't prefer a little polite lying." "You won't get it from me. I hope you'll live to regret it. Why shouldn't I?" "Oh, you might at least be decently human. If you hadn't been so brave yesterday, I might almost think you a savage to-day." "I didn't do that on purpose, I told you," he returned angrily. "You can't make me believe that--it's no use trying." "I shan't try--though it's the gospel truth--and you'll find it out some day." "When?" "Oh, when the time comes, that's all."