"Why did you do that, Margaret? Why have you tried in every way to show me that my presence is disagreeable to you? What have I done to offend you? Tell me, and I'll quit the plantation at once and stay away so long as you remain. I have a right to know. Tell me!" For answer the young woman looked at him in silence but with tear drops glistening in her eyes. At last she said: "You have done nothing that you ought not, I reckon--nothing to offend me. Oh, Boyd, I'm not angry with you--I can never feel that way. I owe my life to you, but that isn't it. I don't know what it is. May be it's just because I'm weak--or may be just because." With that the tears released themselves and trickled down her cheeks. She could not restrain them and she made no effort to hide them. She simply stood there facing him and letting the honest tears flow unrestrained. There was no need of second sight to foretell the result. Nothing in all the world so unseats a man's resolution as the vision of the woman he loves in tears. Boyd Westover was a full-blooded young man and he acted after his kind. He took the unresisting girl in his arms and passionately embraced her. Words on either side were unnecessary. Love is quick to understand. But the words came also, after a space--words of love beyond recalling, words of the kind that make or mar human lives and set Destiny its tasks. III A WOMAN'S WORD Those were halcyon days that followed, while Margaret lingered at Wanalah. The barriers were broken down now between these two; the vexing suspense was over and the most precious certainty that human kind can know had taken its place. And there was not the embarrassment of others' knowing. No word of their awakened love had been spoken, or could be spoken until Margaret's return to The Oaks should impose upon her lover the duty of announcing their understanding to her father and invoking his sanction of their troth. Until that time should come they were not "engaged" and might pass their days and nights under one roof without offending even Virginian propriety. Convention had no claim to control over them in those blissful intervening days. But the shadow of it fell on the morning of the day when Margaret was to journey homewards in company with her maid. "I will visit Colonel Conway at The Oaks to-morrow," Boyd promised as the pair strolled through the garden during the morning hours that alone remained to them now. "I wonder how he will receive the news--our news, Margaret?" "How he will receive it? Why, of course he--" "He's rather rigid, you know, in his views of propriety, and I've sinned against light in that respect. You see I addressed you in my own home, and not only so, but at a time when you were not able to run away." Margaret laughed half below her breath. "That was very terrible of course," she said in an amused tone. "But I see a way out of it, Boyd." "Of course you do. That's feminine instinct. But tell me about it."