At breakfast, in the beginning, Zyp’s manner to me was prettily sympathetic and a little shy. It was the first of my great misery that I must repel her on the threshold of our better understanding, and see her fall away from me for lack of the least expression of that passionate devotion and gratitude that filled my heart to bursting. I could see at once that she was startled--hurt, perhaps, and that she shrunk from me immediately. Jason talked airily to my father all through the meal, but I knew his senses to be as keenly on the alert as if he had sat in silence, with his eyes fixed upon my face. I choked over my bread and bacon; I could not swallow more than a mouthful of the coffee in my cup, and Zyp sat back in her chair, never addressing me after that first rebuff, but pondering on me angrily with her eyes full of a sort of wonder. She stopped me peremptorily as, breakfast over, I was hastening out with all the speed I could muster, and asked me if I didn’t want her company that morning. “No,” I answered; “I am well enough to get about by myself now.” “Very well,” she said. “Then you must do without me altogether for the future.” She turned on her heel and I could only look after her in dumb agony. Then I crept down into the yard and confided my grief to the old cart wheels. Presently, raising my head, I saw her standing before me, her hands under her apron, her face grave with an expression, half of concern, half of defiance. “Now, if you please,” she said, “I want to know the meaning of this?” “Of what?” I asked, with wretched evasiveness. “You know--your manner toward me this morning.” “I have done nothing,” I muttered. “You have insulted me, sir. Is it because I kissed you last night?” “Oh, Zyp!” I cried aloud in great pain. “You know it isn’t--you know it isn’t!” I couldn’t help this one cry. It was forced from me. “Then what’s the reason?” “I can’t give it--I have none. I want to be alone, that’s all.” She stood looking at me a moment in silence, and the line of her mouth hardened. “Very well,” she said, at last. “Then, understand, I’ve done with you. I thought at first it was a mistake or that you were ill again. I’ve been kind to you; you can’t say I haven’t given you a chance. And I pitied you because you were alone and unhappy. Jason, I will tell you, hinted an evil thing of you to me, but even if it was true, which I didn’t believe, I forgave you, thinking, perhaps, it was done for my sake. Well, if it was, I tell you now it was useless, for you will be nothing to me ever again.” And, with these cruel words, she left me. The proud child of the woods could brook no insult to her condescension, and from my comrade she had become my enemy. I suppose I should have been relieved that the inevitable rupture had occurred so swiftly and effectually. Judge you, you poor outcasts who, sanctifying a love in your tumultuous breasts, have had to step aside and yield to another the fruit you so coveted.