Even now he hesitated. The breeze swayed the branches above them, and all the draping pendent wild grapevines that clung about the tree were suddenly astir. The circle of dark shadow in which they stood was inlaid with silver glintings as the moonlight struck through the foliage; the soft radiance fell full in her eyes. “_I_ would give up all the world for you,” he cried impulsively, “because I love you!” She drew back a trifle, and looked over her shoulder into the glittering idealization of the familiar scenes of her life in the glamours of the moonlight and of love. She heard the low dryadic song of the leaves; she heard the beating of her own heart. “Tell me that you love me, Euphemia,” he pleaded. “Tell me that.” Amidst all the joy in her face there was a flash of triumph. She was withdrawing her hands from his, and the realization how like she was to women of a higher sphere, despite her limitations, came to him with a certain surprise. No sooner did she feel her power than she had the will to wield it. The humble little rustic was expressed only in her outer guise. No finished coquette could have given him a more bewildering broadside of beautiful eyes as she said, joyously laughing, “What makes you ask such impossible questions?” The phrase was borrowed of him, in his frequent despair of elucidating the whole scheme of civilization to her ignorance, in their readings. He could not laugh when it was so dexterously turned on himself. “Tell me,” he persisted earnestly, “tell me, Phemie--or I’ll--I’ll”--the assertion had little humility, but he divined its effectiveness--“I’ll go away, and never come back again.” She was still laughing, but he marked that she no longer drew back. “Do you have to be told _everything_?” she quoted anew from his remonstrances because of her catechistic insistence. “Can’t you see through anything without having it point-blank?” with his own impatient intonation. He allowed himself to be decoyed into a hasty smile. “And you’ll send that fellow to the right-about to-morrow?” he urged gravely. “Oh, I’ll be glad enough ter git rid of him!” she cried, in the extremity of her relief.