"A magnificent animal," I retorted.

She blushed, recognising the phrase. "To tell the truth, though, it wasn't the way you look," she went on impulsively, "it was, I think,--I am quite sure,--the time you pushed that wheel up the hill. I adored you, Ben, at that moment. If you'd asked me to marry you on the spot I'd have responded, 'Yes, thank you, sir,' as one of my great-grandmothers did at the altar."

"And to think I didn't even know you were there. I'd forgotten it, but I remember now the General told me I made a spectacle of myself."

"Well, I always liked a spectacle, it's in my blood. I like a man, too, who does things as if he didn't care whether anybody was looking at him or not--and that's you, Ben."

"It's not my business to shatter your ideals," I answered, and the next minute, "O Sally, how is it to end?"

"That depends, doesn't it," she asked, "whether you want to marry me or my maiden aunts?"

"Do you mean that you will marry me?"

"I mean, Ben, that if you aren't so obliging as to marry me, I'll pine away and die a lovelorn death."

"Be serious, Sally."

"Could anything on earth be more serious than a lovelorn death?"

I would have caught her back to my breast, but eluding my arms, she stood poised like the fleeting-spirit of gaiety in the little path.

"Will you promise to marry me, Ben Starr?" she asked.

"I'll promise anything on earth," I answered.

"Not to talk any more about my stooping to a giant?"

"I won't talk about it, darling, I'll let you do it."

"And if you're poor you'll let me be poor too? And if you're rich you'll give me a share of the money?"

"Both--all."

"And you'll make a sacrifice for me--as the General said George wouldn't--whenever I happen particularly to want one?"

"A million of them--anything, everything."

She came a step nearer, and raised her smiling lips to mine.

"Anything--everything, Ben, together," she said.

Presently we walked back slowly, hand in hand, through the maze of box.

"Will you tell your aunts, or shall I, Sally?" I asked.

"We'll go to them together."

"Now, at this instant?"

"Now--at this instant," she agreed, "but I thought you were so patient?"

"Patient? I'm as patient as an engine on the Great South Midland."

"A minute ago you were prepared to wait ten years."

"Oh, ten years!" I echoed, as I followed her out of the enchanted garden.

At the corner the surrey was standing, and the face of old Shadrach, the negro driver, stared back at me, transfixed with amazement.

"Whar you gwine now, Miss Sally?" he demanded defiantly of his young mistress, as I took my place under the fur rug beside her.

"Home, Uncle Shadrach," she replied.

"Ain't I gwine drap de gent'man some whar on de way up?"

"No, Uncle Shadrach, home,"--and for home we started merrily with a flick of the whip over the backs of the greys.

Sitting beside her for the first time in my life, I was conscious, as we drove through the familiar streets, only of an acute physical delight in her presence. As she turned toward me, her breath fanned my cheek, the touch of her arm on mine was a rapture, and when the edge of her white veil was blown into my face, I felt my blood rush to meet it. Never before had I been so confident, so strong, so a.s.sured of the future. Not the future alone, but the whole universe seemed to lie in the closed palm of my hand. I knew that I was plain, that I was rough beside the velvet softness of the woman who had promised to share my life; but this plainness, this roughness, no longer troubled me since she had found in it something of the power that had drawn her to me. My awkwardness had dropped from me in the revelation of my strength which she had brought.

The odour of burning leaves floated up from the street, and I saw again her red shoes dancing over the sunken graves in the churchyard. Oh, those red shoes had danced into my life and would stay there forever!

CHAPTER XVI

IN WHICH SALLY SPEAKS HER MIND

We crossed the threshold, which I had thought never to pa.s.s again, and entered the drawing-room, where a cedar log burned on the andirons. At either end of the low bra.s.s fender, Miss Mitty and Miss Matoaca sat very erect, like two delicate silhouettes, the red light of the flames shining through their fine, almost transparent profiles. Beyond them, over the rosewood spinet, I saw their portrait, painted in fancy dress, with clasped hands under a garland of roses.

As we entered the room, they rose slightly from their chairs, and turned toward us with an expression of mild surprise on their faces. It was impossible, I knew, for their delicately moulded features to express any impulse more strongly.

"Dear aunties," began Sally, in a voice that was a caress, "I've brought Ben back with me because I met him in the garden on Church Hill--and--and--and he told me that he loved me."

"He told you that he loved you?" repeated Miss Mitty in a high voice, while Miss Matoaca sat speechless, with her unnaturally bright eyes on her niece's face.

Kneeling on the rug at their feet, Sally looked from one to the other with an appealing and tender glance.

"You brought him back because he told you that he loved you?" said Miss Mitty again, as if her closed mind had refused to admit the words she had uttered.

"Well, only partly because of that, Aunt Mitty," replied Sally bravely, "the rest was because--because I told him that I loved him."

For a moment there was a tense and unnatural silence in the midst of which I heard the sharp crackling of the fire and smelt the faint sweet smell of the burning cedar. The two aunts looked at each other over the kneeling girl, and it seemed to me that the long, narrow faces had grown suddenly pinched and old.

"I--I don't think we understood quite what you said, Sally dear," said Miss Matoaca, in a hesitating voice; and I felt sorry for her as she spoke--sorry for them both because the edifice of their beliefs and traditions, reared so patiently through the centuries by dead Fairfaxes and Blands, had crumbled about their ears.

"What she means, Miss Matoaca," I said gently, coming forward into the firelight, "is that I have asked her to marry me."