summer resting for half an hour, seated on the door-step, looking
across their scant fields girt by the measureless frowning woods; or
in winter thawing a little patch with her breath on the windowpane,
dulled with frost, to watch the snow falling on the wintry earth and
the forest ... The forest ... Always the inscrutable, inimical
forest, with a host of dark things hiding there--closed round them
with a savage grip that must be loosened little by little, year by
year; a few acres won each spring and autumn as the years pass,
throughout all the long days of a dull harsh life ... No, that she
could not face ...

"I know well enough that we shall have to work hard at first,"
Eutrope went on, "but you have courage, Maria, and are well used to
labour, as I am. I have always worked hard; no one can say that I
was ever lazy, and if only you will marry me it will be my joy to
toil like an ox all the day long to make a thriving place of it, so
that we shall be in comfort before old age comes upon us. I do not
touch drink, Maria, and truly I love you ..."

His voice quivered, and he put out his hand toward the latch to take
hers, or perhaps to hinder her from opening the door and leaving him
without his answer.

"My affection for you ... of that I am not able to speak ..."

Never a word did she utter in reply. Once more a young man was
telling his love, was placing in her hands all he had to give; and
once more she could but hearken in mute embarrassment, only saved
from awkwardness by her immobility and silence. Town-bred girls had
thought her stupid, when she was but honest and truthful; very close