overarching trees, with their enlacing lattice-work of curving
boughs.

"It is better not," she said, almost pleadingly, for her strength
was failing her. She almost begged him to be merciful.

"But you believe that I love you, Winsome?" he persisted.

Low in her heart of hearts Winsome believed it. Her ear drank in
every word. She was silent only because she was thirsty to hear
more. But Ralph feared that he had fatally offended her.

"Are you angry with me, Winsome?" he said, bending from his
masculine height to look under the lilac sunbonnet.

Winsome shook her head. "Not angry, Ralph, only sorry to the
heart."

She stopped and turned round to him. She held out a hand, when
Ralph took it in both of his. There was in the touch a
determination to keep the barriers slight but sure between them.
He felt it and understood.

"Listen, Ralph," she said, looking at him with shining eyes, in
which another man would have read the love, "I want you to
understand. There is a fate about those who love me. My mother
died long ago; my father I never knew; my grandfather and
grandmother are--what you know, because of me; Mr. Welsh, at the
Manse, who used to love me and pet me when I was a little girl,
now does not speak to me. There is a dark cloud all about me!"