"I think that there is nothing for which you care overmuch," she said at
last. "Not for gold or the lack of it, not for friends or for enemies, not
even for yourself."
"I have known you for many years," he answered. "I have watched you grow
from a child into a gracious and beautiful woman. Do you not think that I
care for you, Evelyn?"
Near where he sat so many violets were blooming that they made a purple
carpet for the ground. Going over to them, she knelt and began to pluck
them. "If any danger threatened me," she began, in her clear, low voice,
"I believe that you would step between me and it, though at the peril of
your life. I believe that you take some pleasure in what you are pleased
to style my beauty, some pride in a mind that you have largely formed. If
I died early, it would grieve you for a little while. I call you my
friend."
"I would be called your lover," he said.
She laid her fan upon the ground, heaped it with violets, and turned again
to her reaping. "How might that be," she asked, "when you do not love me?
I knew that you would marry me. What do the French call it,--mariage de
convenance?"
Her voice was even, and her head was bent so that he could not see her
face. In the pause that followed her words treetop whispered to treetop,
but the sunshine lay very still and bright upon the road and upon the
flowers by the wayside.
"There are worse marriages," Haward said at last. Rising from the log, he
moved to the side of the kneeling figure. "Let the violets rest, Evelyn,
while we reason together. You are too clear-eyed. Since they offend you,
I will drop the idle compliments, the pretty phrases, in which neither of
us believes. What if this tinted dream of love does not exist for us? What
if we are only friends--dear and old friends"-He stooped, and, taking her by the busy hands, made her stand up beside
him. "Cannot we marry and still be friends?" he demanded, with something
like laughter in his eyes. "My dear, I would strive to make you happy; and
happiness is as often found in that temperate land where we would dwell as
in Love's flaming climate." He smiled and tried to find her eyes, downcast
and hidden in the shadow of her hat. "This is no flowery wooing such as
women love," he said; "but then you are like no other woman. Always the
truth was best with you."
Upon her wrenching her hands from his, and suddenly and proudly raising
her head, he was amazed to find her white to the lips.