"But you're goin' away?"

"Yes--because I couldn't ever marry you. You've a place in my
heart no one else ever could have, but tied down here I'd get
restless. I'd feel I was--wastin' myself. There's two sides to
me, you see. There's the sleepy old side you love an' there's a
sort of energy--the feeling that makes me do wild things. That's
the part of me that may be useful somewhere, that'll last when
I'm not beautiful any more."

She broke of with characteristic suddenness and sighed, "Oh,
sweet cooky!" as her mood changed.

Half closing her eyes and tipping back her head till it rested on
the seat-back she let the savory breeze fan her eyes and ripple
the fluffy curls of her bobbed hair. They were in the country
now, hurrying between tangled growths of bright-green coppice and
grass and tall trees that sent sprays of foliage to hang a cool
welcome over the road. Here and there they passed a battered
negro cabin, its oldest white-haired inhabitant smoking a corncob
pipe beside the door, and half a dozen scantily clothed
pickaninnies parading tattered dolls on the wild-grown grass in
front. Farther out were lazy cotton-fields where even the workers
seemed intangible shadows lent by the sun to the earth, not for
toil, but to while away some age-old tradition in the golden
September fields. And round the drowsy picturesqueness, over the
trees and shacks and muddy rivers, flowed the heat, never
hostile, only comforting, like a great warm nourishing bosom for
the infant earth.