But the man's smile, so easy, so disarming, held her. He saw and understood, and he hastened to reassure her.
"Guess I ain't pryin'," he said bluntly. "These things just come along to my tongue, feeling you were troubled at this--hill. You've told me a heap since you come to the farm. You told me things which I don't guess you wer' yearnin' to tell any one. But you didn't tell 'em with your tongue. An' I don't guess you need to. Set your mind easy. You're scared to death of some trouble which ain't of your seekin'--wal, I don't believe in such trouble."
Then he laughed in so unconcerned, so buoyant and whole-hearted a fashion that Joan's confidence and hope leapt again.
"Say," he added, as he saw the brightening of her face, "when you fancy that trouble's gettin' around, when you fancy it's good an' big, an' a whole heap to carry, why, you can pass it right on to me. I'm yearnin' to get busy with jest sech a proposition."
Buck's manner was irresistible. Joan felt herself swept along by it. She longed there and then to tell him the whole of her miserable little story. Yes, he made it seem so small to her now. He made it, at the moment, seem like nothing. It was almost as though he had literally lifted her burden and was bearing the lion's share of it himself. Her heart thrilled with gratitude, with joy in this man's wonderful comradeship. She longed to open her heart to him--to implore him to shield her from all those terrible anxieties which beset her. She longed to feel the clasp of his strong hand in hers and know that it was there to support her always. She felt all these things without one shadow of fear--somehow his very presence dispelled her shadows.
But only did she permit her warm smile to convey something of all she felt as she rejected his offer.
"You don't know what you are asking," she said gently. Then she shook her head. "It is impossible. No one can shift the burdens of life on to the shoulders of another--however willing they be. No one has the right to attempt it. As we are born, so we must live. The life that is ours is ours alone."
Buck caught at her words with a sudden outburst of passionate remonstrance.
"You're wrong--dead wrong," he declared vehemently, his eyes glowing with the depth of feeling stirring him, a hot flush forcing its way through the deep tanning of his cheeks. "No gal has a right to carry trouble with a man around to help. She's made for the sunlight, for the warmth an' ease of life. She's made to set around an' take in all those good things the good God meant for her so she can pass 'em right on to the kiddies still to be born. A woman's jest the mother of the world. An' the men she sets on it are there to see her right. The woman who don't see it that way is wrong--dead wrong. An' the man that don't get right up on to his hind legs an' do those things--wal, he ain't a man."