"But 'going off' does not always mean railroads and electric light," he

went on half seriously. "Suppose I came back poor, but honest, as they
say?"

Laughter rippled on her lips. He watched the humorous tremor of her
nostrils.

"Then I should probably kill the fatted chicken for you," she said.

There was a touch of bitterness in his answer. "Only in that case I
should stay away." As he spoke he stopped to break off a drooping branch
from a sweet-gum tree that grew near the road.

"You once called this your colour," he said quietly as he fastened the
leaves on her horse's head. "There is no tree that turns so clear and so
fiery."

Then, as she rode on with the branch waving like a banner before her, he
laughed with a keen delight in the savage brilliance.

"You remind me of--who is it?" he asked--"'_Clear as the sun and
terrible as an army with banners_.'"

Her smile was warm upon him.

"But my banners fall before the wind," she said as several loosened
leaves fluttered to the road. "So I am not terrible, after all." The
glow of the gum-tree was in her face. His eyes fell before it, and he
did not speak. The soft footfalls of the horse on the damp ground
sounded distinctly. Overhead the wind rustled among the trees.

As they emerged from the wood and passed the Burr farm they saw Amos
leaning on his gate, looking moodily upon the morning.

"Good-morning, Mr. Burr!" said Eugenia with the pleasant condescension
of the general in her manner. "Fine weather, isn't it?"

He nodded awkwardly and admitted, with a muttered reservation, that the
weather might be worse. Then he looked at Nicholas. "If you ain't got
nothin' better to do I reckon you might lend a hand at the ploughin',"
he surlily suggested.

"Why, so I might," assented Nicholas good-humouredly. "I've a couple of
hours free."

He fastened more securely the branch in the horse's bridle; then,
raising his hat, he turned and vaulted the whitewashed fence, while
Eugenia, touching her horse into a gallop, vanished in the distance of
the open road, blazing her track with scarlet gum leaves that scattered
royally in the wind.

As Nicholas passed the peanut field he nodded pleasantly to the
congregation of negroes assembled for the annual festival called "a
picking." They ranged in degrees from Uncle Ish, the oldest
representative of his race, to Betsey's five-year-old Jeremiah, who had
already been detected in an attempt to filch the nuts from an overturned
shock, and was being soundly admonished by his mother's avenging palm.
The ground was strewn with baskets and buckets of varying dimensions,
into which the nuts were gathered before being consigned to the huge
hamper guarded by Amos Burr. A hoarse clamour, like that produced by a
flock of crows, went up from the animated swarm as it settled to work.

Nicholas crossed to the adjoining field and ploughed deep furrows in the
soil, going into breakfast with the smell of the warm earth about him
and the glow of exercise in his blood. He ate heartily and listened
without remark to the political vagaries of his father. Amos Burr had
been "looking into politics" of late, and his stubborn wits had been
fixed by a grievance. "If he was a fool befo' now, he's a plum fool
now," Marthy Burr had observed dispassionately. "I ain't never seen no
head so level that it could bear the lettin' in of politics. It makes a
fool of a man and a worse fool of a fool. The government's like a mule,
it's slow and it's sure; it's slow to turn, and it's sure to turn the
way you don't want it."

"I tell you it's done promised to help the farmer," put in Amos heavily,
bringing his large red hand down upon the table. "Ain't it been helpin'
the manufacturer all these years? Ain't it been lookin' arter the
labourer, black an' white? Ain't it time for it to keep its word to the
farmer?"

"In the meantime I'd finish that piece of ploughing, if I were you,"
suggested Nicholas. "The more work in the fall the less in the
spring--that's a proverb for you."

"I don't want no proverb," returned Amos sullenly. "I want my rights,
an' I want the country to give 'em to me."

"I ain't never seen no good come of settin' down an' wishin' for
rights," remarked his wife tartly. "It's a sight better to be up an'
plantin'."

Nicholas finished his breakfast, and a little later walked in to town.
He was in exuberant spirits, and his thoughts were high on the
scaffolding where his future was building. Success and Eugenia startled,
allured, delighted him. He was at the age of sublime self-confidence,
but his eyes were not bandaged by it. He knew that without success--such
success as he dreamed of--there could be, for him, no Eugenia. He
believed in her as he believed in the sun, and yet he was not sure of
her--he could not be until he possessed her and she bore his name. That
she might not love him he admitted; that she might even love another he
saw to be dimly possible; but he was determined that so long as no other
man held her his arms should be open. In the first ardour of his mood
his relative position to that society of which she formed a part was
lost sight of, if not obscured. Now he realised bitterly that he might
work for a lifetime in the class in which he was born, and at the end
still find Eugenia far from him. He must rise above his work and his
people, he must cut his old name anew, he must walk rough-shod where his
mind led him--among men who were his superiors only in the accident of a
better birthright. And if on that higher plane his ambitions did not
betray, he would bring honour to his State and to Eugenia.

Here the two loves of the boy and the man stood out boldly. The old
romantic fervour with which he had longed for the days of Marshall and
Madison, of Jefferson and Henry, still lingered on as an exotic
patriotism in an era of time-servers and unprofitable servants. There
was an old-fashioned democracy about him--a pioneer simplicity--as one
who had walked from the great days of Virginia into her lesser ones. A
century ago he might have left his plough to fight, and, having fought,
might have returned thereto; but the battle would have tingled in his
blood and the furrows have gone crooked. He would have ploughed, not for
love of the plough, but because the time for the sowing of the grain had
come.

Now he walked rapidly to his work, seeing Eugenia in the woods, in the
sunshine, in the very clouds lifted high above. The thought of her
surrounded him as an atmosphere.

As for the girl, she rode home and spent the long day in the garden
potting plants for the winter. When she came into the hall in the early
afternoon, with her trowel in her hand and her sleeves rolled back from
her white arms, her father called her to the porch, and, going out, she
found Dudley Webb in one of the cane chairs. He sprang to his feet as
she reached the threshold, and held out his hand, but she laughed and
showed the earth that clung to her wrists. "Unclean! unclean!" she cried
gaily. Her face had flushed from its warm pallor and her hair hung low
upon her forehead. A long streak of clay lay across her skirt where she
had knelt in the flower-bed.

He seized her protesting hand, admiration lighting his eyes. "Why,
little Eugie is a woman!" he exclaimed. "Can you grasp it, General?"

The general shook his head.

"If she wasn't almost as tall as I, I shouldn't believe it," he
declared, "though she's as old as her mother was when I married her."

Eugenia seated herself upon the bench, still holding the trowel in her
hand. She was watching the interest in her father's face, and she
realised, half resentfully, that it was evoked by Dudley Webb.

He had drawn the general's favourite anecdotes from him, and they had
plunged together into a discussion of the good old days. After a few
light words she sat silent, listening with tender attention to the
threadbare stories on the one side and the hearty applause of them on
the other. She wondered wistfully why Dudley and herself were the only
persons who understood as well as loved the general. Why was it Dudley,
and not Nicholas, who brought that youthful look to his face and the
heartiness to his voice?

"Some one was telling me the other day--I think it was Colonel
Preston--that he fought beside you at Seven Pines," Dudley was saying
with that absorption in his subject which won him a friend in every man
who told him a joke.

"Jake Preston!" exclaimed the general. "Why, bless my soul! I've slept
under the same blanket with Jake Preston twenty times. I was standing by
him when he got that bullet in his thigh. Did he tell you?"

Eugenia rose in a moment and went back to her flowers. As she passed she
threw a grateful glance at Dudley, but when she reached the garden it
was of Nicholas she was thinking. There was a glow at her heart that
kept alive the memory of his eyes as he looked at her in the wood, of
his voice when he called her name, of his hand when it brushed her own.

She fell happily to work, and when Dudley came out, an hour later, to
find her, she was singing softly as she uprooted a scarlet geranium.

He smiled and looked down on her with frank enjoyment of her ripening
womanhood, but it did not occur to him to join in the transplanting as
Nicholas would have done. He held off and absorbed the picture.

"You do papa so much good!" said Eugenia gratefully. "I hope you will
come out whenever you are in Kingsborough."

She was kneeling upon the ground, her hands buried in the flower-bed,
her firm arms rising white above the rich earth. The line of her bosom
rose and fell swiftly, and her breath came in soft pants. There was a
flush in her cheeks.

"If you wish it I will come," he answered impulsively. "I will come to
Kingsborough every week if you wish it."

His temperament responded promptly to the appeal of her beauty, and his
blood quickened as it did when women moved him. There was about him,
withal, a fantastic chivalry which succumbed to the glitter of false
sentiment. He would have made the remark had Eugenia been plain--but he
would not have come to Kingsborough.

"It would please your mother," returned the girl quietly. She had the
sexual self-poise of the Virginia woman, and she weighed the implied
compliment at its due value. Had he declared he would die for her once a
week, she would have received the assurance with much the same smiling
indifference.

"I'll run down, I think, pretty often this winter," he went on easily.
"It's a nice old town, after all--isn't it?"

"It's the dearest old town in the world," said Eugenia.

"Well, I believe it is--strange, I used to find it dull, don't you
think? By the way, will you let me ride with you sometimes? I hear you
are as great a horsewoman as ever."

Eugenia looked up calmly.

"I go very early," she answered. "Can you get up at daybreak?"

He laughed his pleasant laugh.

"Oh, I might manage it," he rejoined. "I'm not much of an early riser, I
never knew before what charms the sunrise held."

But Eugenia went on potting plants.




IV


During the following week Sally Burwell came to spend the night with
Eugenia, and the girls sat before the log fire in Eugenia's room until
they heard the cocks crow shrilly from the hen-house. The room was a
large, old-fashioned chamber, full of dark corners and unsuspected
alcoves; and the lamp on the bureau served only to intensify the shadows
that lay beyond its faint illumination.

Sally, her pretty hair in a tumble on her shoulders and the light of the
logs on her bare arms, was stretched upon the hearth-rug, looking up at
Eugenia, who lay in an easy-chair, her feet almost touching the embers.
A waiter of russet apples was on the floor beside them.

"This is my idea of comfort," murmured Sally sleepily as she munched an
apple. "No men and no manners."

"If you liked it, you'd come often, chick," returned Eugenia.

"Bless you! I'm too busy. I made over two dresses this week, trimmed
mamma a bonnet, and covered a sofa with cretonne. One of the dresses is
a love. I wore it yesterday, and Dudley said it reminded him of one he'd
seen on the stage."

"He says a good deal," observed Eugenia unsympathetically.

"Doesn't he?" laughed Sally. "At any rate, he said that he found you
reading Plato under the trees, and that any woman who read Plato ought
to be ostracised--unless she happens to be handsome enough to make you
overlook it. Is that your Plato? What is he like?"

Eugenia savagely shook her head.

"It's no affair of his," she retorted promptly, meaning not Plato, but
Dudley.

"Oh! he said he knew it wasn't. I think he even wished it were. You're
too unconventional for him--he frankly admits it--but he admits also
that you're good-looking enough to warrant the unconventionality of a
Hottentot--and you are, you dear, bad thing, though your forehead's too
high and your chin's too long and your nose isn't all that a nose should
be."

"Thanks," drawled Eugenia amicably. "But Dudley's a nice fellow, all the
same. He gets on splendidly with papa--and I bless him for it."

"He gets on well with everybody--even his mother--which makes me suspect
that he's a Job masquerading as an Apollo. By the way, Mrs. Webb wants
you to join some society she's getting up called the 'Daughters of
Duty.'"

"Oh, I can't! I can't!" protested Eugenia distressfully. "I detest
'Daughter' things, and I have a rooted aversion to my duty. But if she
comes to me I'll join it--I know I shall! How did you keep out of it?"

"I didn't. I'm in it. It seems that our duty is confined to 'preserving
the antiquities' of Kingsborough--so I began by presenting a jar of
pickled cucumbers to Uncle Ish. I trust they won't be the death of him,
but he was the only antiquity in sight."

She gave the smouldering log a push with her foot, and it broke apart,
scattering a shower of sparks. "I don't know any other woman so much
admired and so little loved," she mused of Mrs. Webb.

"Papa worships her," said Eugenia. "All men do--at a distance. She's the
kind of woman you never get near enough to to feel that she is flesh.
Now, Aunt Chris is just the opposite. No one ever gets far enough away
from her to feel that she's a saint--which she is."

"It's odd she never married," wondered Sally.

"She never had time to." Eugenia clasped her hands behind her head and
looked up at the high, plastered ceiling. "She never happened to be in a
place where she could be spared. But you know her lover died when she
was young," she added. "It broke her heart, but it did not destroy her
happiness. She has been happy for forty years with a broken heart."

"I know," said Sally. "It seems strange, doesn't it? But I've known so
many like her. The happiest woman I ever knew had lost everything she
cared for in the war. That war was fought on women's hearts, but they
went on beating just the same. I'm glad I wasn't I then."

"And I'm sorry. I like stirring deeds and shot and shell and tattered
flags. They thrill one."

"And kill one," added Sally. "But you've got that kind of pluck. You
aren't afraid."

"Oh! yes, I am," protested Eugenia. "I'm afraid of bats and of getting
fat like my forefathers."

Sally shook a reassuring head.

"But you won't, darling. Your mother was thin, and you're the image of
her--everybody says so."

"But I'm afraid--horribly afraid. I don't dare eat potatoes, and I
wouldn't so much as look at a glass of buttermilk. The fear is on me."

"It's absurd. Why, your grandma Tucker was a rail--I remember her. I
know your other grandmother was--enormous; but you ought to strike the
happy medium--and you do. You're splendid. You aren't a bit too large
for your height."

Eugenia laughed as she twisted Sally's curls about her fingers. "You're
the dearest little duck that ever lived on dry land," she said. "If I
were a man I'd be wild about you."

"A few of them are," returned Sally meekly, casting up her eyes, "but
I--"

"How about Gerald Smith?"

"He's too tall. I look like an aspiring grasshopper beside him."

"And Jack Wyth?"

"He's too short."

"And Sydney Kent?"

"He's too stupid."

"And Tom Bassett?"

Sally yawned.

"He's too--everything. There's cock crow, and I'm going to bed."

The next afternoon Eugenia drove Sally in to town, and stopped on her
outward trip to pay a visit to Mrs. Webb. She found that lady serenely
seated in her drawing-room, as unruffled as if she had not just
dismissed a cook and cooked a dinner.

"Oh, yes, thank you, dear, all is well," she replied in answer to the
girl's question; for she held it to be vulgarity to allude, in her
drawing-room, to the trials of housekeeping. She was not touched by such
questions because she ignored that she was in any way concerned in them.
She spent six hours a day with her servants, but had she spent
twenty-four she would have remained secure in her conviction that they
did not come within the sphere of her life.

"I have wanted to see you to ask you to join my society, the 'Daughters
of Duty,'" she went on, her eyes on a piece of fine white damask she was
hem-stitching. "Its object is to preserve our old landmarks, and when I
spoke to your father he told me he was quite sure you would care to
become an active member."

"I'm afraid I don't have much time," began Eugenia helplessly, when Mrs.
Webb interrupted her, though without haste or discourtesy.

"Not have time, my dear?" she repeated with her slow, fine smile. "If I
can find time, with all my other duties, don't you think that you might
be able to do so?"

Eugenia was baffled. "Of course I love Kingsborough," she said, "and I'd
preserve every inch of it with my own hands if I could--but I can't bear
meetings--and--and things."

Mrs. Webb took a careful stitch in the damask. "I thought you might care
enough to assist us," she remarked tentatively; and Eugenia succumbed.

"I'll do anything I can," she declared. "I will, indeed--only you
mustn't expect much."

In a few moments she rose to go, lingering with a courteous appearance
of being unwilling to depart, which belonged to her social training. As
she stood in the doorway, her hand in Mrs. Webb's, the older woman
looked at her almost affectionately.

"I had a letter from Dudley this morning," she said. "He is coming down
next week for Sunday."

A flush crossed Eugenia's face, evoking an expression of irritation.

"You must miss him," she observed sympathetically.

"I do miss him, but he comes often. He is a good son. He sent a message
to you, by the way, but it was not important."

"No, it was not important," repeated Eugenia with a feeling that her
carelessness appeared to be assumed.

She lightly kissed Mrs. Webb and ran down the steps and into the
carriage, which was waiting in the road. Her visit had left her with a
curious sense of oppression, and she breathed a long draught of the
invigorating air.

As she drove down the street she saw Nicholas coming out of his office
and offered him a "lift" to his home. He said little on the way, and his
utterances were forced, but Eugenia talked lightly and rapidly, as she
always did when with him.

She told him of Sally Burwell, of the last letter from Bernard--who was
coming home soon--of Mrs. Webb and the "Daughters of Duty."

"The truth is, I like her, but I'm afraid of her--dreadfully."

"She disapproves of your--your liking for me," he said bitterly. "But
every one does that--even the judge, though he doesn't say anything. And
they are right--I see it. You know from what I came and what I am."

"Yes, I know what you are," she returned defiantly, "and they shall all
know some day."

He turned and looked at her as she sat beside him, but he was silent,
nor did he speak until he said "good-bye" before his father's gate.

It was some days later that she saw him again. She had gone out to
gather goldenrod for the great blue vases that stood on the dining-room
mantel-piece, and was standing knee-deep in the ragged field, when he
leaped the fence that divided the farms and crossed to where she stood.

The sun was going down behind the blackened branches of the dead oak,
and the wide common, spread with goldenrod and life-everlasting, lay
like a sea of flame and snow. Eugenia, standing in its midst, a tall
woman in a dress of brown, fell in richly with the surrounding colours.
Her arms were filled with the yellow plumes and her dress was tinselled
with the dried pollen that floated in the air. As Nicholas reached her
she was seeking to free herself from the clutch of a crimson briar that
crawled along the ground, and in the effort some of the broken stalks
slipped from her hold.

Without speaking, he knelt beside her and released her skirt. "You have
torn it," he said quietly, but he was looking up at her, and there was
a quality in his voice which thrilled her.

"Have I?" she returned quickly. "Well, I can mend it--but there! it's
caught again. I've been trying to get free for--hours."

He smiled.

"You came into the field only twenty minutes ago. I saw you. But, hold
on. I'll uproot this blackberry vine while I'm about it."

He tore it from its tenacious hold to the earth and flung it into the
field. Then he examined the rent in Eugenia's dress.

"If you had waited until I came you might have spared yourself
this--patch," he observed.

"I shan't patch it--and I didn't know you were coming."

"Don't I always come--when there's a patch to be saved?" he asked. "I
hate to see things ruined."

"Then you might have come sooner. There, give me my goldenrod. It's all
scattered."

He began patiently to gather up the stalks, arranging them in an even
layer of equal lengths.

Eugenia watched him, laughing.

"How precise you are!" she said.

"Aren't they right?" He looked up for her approval, and she saw that he
had grown singularly boyish. His face was less rugged, more sensitive.
He wore no hat, and his thick red hair had fallen across his forehead.
She felt the peculiar power of his look as she had felt it before.

"No, they're wrong. They aren't Chinese puzzles. Don't fix them so
tight. Here."

She took them from him, and as his hands touched hers she noticed that
they were cold. "You're shaking them all apart," he protested, "and I
took such a lot of trouble."

As she bent her head his eyes followed the dark coil of hair to the
white nape of her neck where her collar rose. Several loose strands had
blown across her ear and wound softly about the delicate lobe. He wanted
to raise his hand and put them in place, but he checked himself with a
start. With his eyes upon her he recalled the warmth of her woollen
dress, and he wished that he had put his lips to it as he knelt. She
would never have known.

Then, by a curious emotional phenomenon, she seemed to be suddenly
invested with the glory of the sunset. The goldenrod burned at her feet
and on her bosom, and her fervent blood leaped to her face. The next
moment he staggered like a man blinded by too much light--the field,
with Eugenia rising in its midst, flamed before his eyes, and he put out
his hand like one in pain.

"What is it?" she asked quickly, and her voice seemed a part of the
general radiance. "You have been looking at the sun. It hurts my eyes."

"No," he answered steadily, "I was looking at you."

She thrilled as he spoke and brought her eyes to the level of his. Then
she would have looked away, but his gaze held her, and she made a sudden
movement of alarm--a swift tremor to escape. She held the sheaf of
goldenrod to her bosom and above it her eyes shone; her breath came
quickly between her parted lips. All her changeful beauty was startled
into life.

"Genia!" he said softly, so softly that he seemed speaking to himself.
"Genia!"

"Yes?" She responded in the same still whisper.

"You know?"

"Yes, I know," she repeated slowly. Her glance fell from his and she
turned away.

"You know it is--impossible," he said.

"Yes, I know it is impossible."

There was a gasp in her voice. She turned to move onward--a briar caught
her dress; she stumbled for an instant, and he flung out his arms.

"You know it is impossible," he said, and kissed her.

The sheaf of goldenrod loosened and scattered between them. Her head lay
on his arm, and he felt her warm breath come and go. Her face was
upturned, and he saw her eyes as he had never seen them before--light on
light, shadow on shadow. He looked at her in the brief instant as a man
looks to remember--at the white brow--the red mouth, at the blue veins,
and the dark hair, at the upward lift of the chin and the straight
throat--at all the perfect colouring and the imperfect outline.

"You know it is impossible," he repeated, and put her from him.

Eugenia gathered herself together like one stunned. "I must go," she
said breathlessly. "I must go."

Then she hesitated and stood before him, her hands on her bosom, a
single spray of goldenrod clinging to her dress.

He folded his arms as he faced her.

"I have loved you all my life," he said.

She bowed her head; her face had gone white.

"I shall always love you," he went on. "You may as well know it. Men
change, but I do not. I have never really loved anybody else. I have
tried to love my family, but I never did. When I was a little,
God-forsaken chap I used to want to love people, but I couldn't--I
couldn't even love the judge--whom I would die for. I love you."

"I know it," she said.

"If you will wait I will work for you. I will work until they let me
have you. I don't mean that I shall ever be good enough for you--because
I shall not be. I shall always be a brute beside you--but if you will
wait I will win you. I swear it!"

She had not moved. She was as still as the dead oak that towered above
them. The sunset struck upon her bowed head and upon the quiet bosom,
where her hands were clasped.

"I will wait," she answered.

He came nearer and kissed the hands upon her breast. His face was
flushed and his lips were hot.

"Thank you," he said simply as he drew back.

In a moment he stooped to pick up the scattered goldenrod, heaping it
into her arms. "This is enough to fill the house," he protested. "You
can't want so much."

He had regained his rational tone, and she responded to it with a smile.

"I never know when I'm satisfied," she said. "It is my weakness. As a
child I always ate candy until it made me ill."

They crossed the field, the long plumes brushing against them and
powdering them with a feathery gold dust. At the fence she gave him the
bunch and lightly swung herself over the sunken rails. It did not occur
to him to assist her; she had always been as good as he at vaulting
bars. Now her long skirts retarded her, and she laughed as she came
quickly to the ground on the opposite side.

"One of the many disadvantages of my sex," she said. "The best prisons
men ever invented are women's skirts. Our wings are clipped while we
wear them."

"It is hard," he returned as he recalled her school-girl feats. "You
were such a mighty jumper."

"Those halcyon days are done," she sighed. "I can never stray beyond my
'sphere' again."

They had reached the end of the avenue, so he left her and went homeward
along the road. The sun had gone slowly down and the western horizon was
ripped open in a deep red track. The charred skeleton of the oak loomed
black and sinister against the afterglow, and at its feet the glory went
out of the autumn field. Straight ahead the sound of shots rang out
where a flock of bats circled above the road. On the darkening landscape
the lights began to glimmer in farmhouses far apart, and to Nicholas
they seemed watchful, friendly eyes that looked upon him. All Nature was
watchful--all the universe friendly. The glow which irradiated his
outlook with an abrupt transfiguration was to him the glow of universal
joy, though he knew it to be but the vanishing beam of youth and the end
thereof age.

It seemed to him that he was singled out--securely set apart by some
beneficent hand for some supreme good which, in his limited
observation, he had never seen put forth in the lots of others. His own
life lay so much nearer the Divine purpose than did the lives of his
neighbours--the purpose of Nature, whose end is the happiness that
conforms to sane and immutable laws. His kiss on Eugenia's lips was to
him God-given; the answer in her eyes had flamed a Scriptural
inspiration. In the tumultuous leaping of his thoughts it seemed to him
that the meaning of existence lay unrolled--a meaning obscured in all
religions, overlooked in all philosophies--a meaning that could be read