after you, as your spurs do, when you have been riding and are on foot,
at every step you take?'

'Schlagend!' laughed Greif. 'An annihilating argument! I will never
think of writing verses any more, I promise you.'

'No. Don't,' answered Hilda emphatically. 'Unless you feel that you
cannot love me in plain language--in prose,' she added, with a glance
of her sparkling eyes.

'Verse would be better than nothing, then?'

'Than nothing--anything would be better than that.'

Greif fell to wondering whether her serious tone meant all that he
understood by it, and he asked himself whether her calm, passionless
affection were really what he in his heart called love. She felt no
emotion, like his own. She could pronounce the words 'I love' again and
again without a tremor of the voice or a change in the even shading of
her radiant colour. It was possible that she only thought of him as a
brother, as a part of the world she lived in, as something dearer than
her mother because nearer to her own age. It was possible that if she
had been in the world she might have seen some man whose mere presence
could make her feel all she had never felt. It was conceivable that she
should have fallen into this sisterly sort of affection in the absence
of any person who might have awakened her real sensibilities. Greif's
masculine nature was not satisfied, for it craved a more active
response, as a lad watches for the widening ripples when he has dropped
a pebble into a placid pool. An irresistible desire to know the truth
overcame Greif.