Without surprise or embarrassment, she changed the basket from her right
to her left arm, and this simple movement had the effect of placing him
at a distance, though apparently by accident.

"That's because of the old gentleman, I reckon," she answered, "my folks
all hated him, I don't know why."

"But can you guess? You see I really want to understand. I've been away
since I was eight years old and I have only the haziest memories."

The question brought them into a sudden intimacy, as if his impulsive
appeal to her had established a relation which had not existed the
minute before. He liked the look of her strong shoulders, of her deep
bosom rising in creamy white to her throat; and the quiver of her red
lower lip when she talked, aroused in him a swift and facile emotion.
The melancholy of the landscape, reacting on the dangerous softness of
his mood, bent his nature toward her like a flame driven by the wind.
Around them the red-topped orchard grass faded to pale rose in the
twilight, and beyond the crumbling rail fence miles of feathery
broomsedge swept to the pines that stood straight and black against the
western horizon. Impressions of the hour and the scene, of colour and
sound, were blended in the allurement which Nature proffered him, for
her own ends, through the woman beside him. Not Blossom Revercomb, but
the great Mother beguiled him. The forces that moved in the wind, in the
waving broomsedge, and in the call of the whip-poor-will, stirred in
his pulses as they stirred in the objects around him. That fugitive
attraction of the body, which Nature has shielded at the cost of finer
attributes, leaped upon him like a presence that had waited in earth and
sky. Loftier aspirations vanished before it. Not his philosophy but the