Audrey

"I think that there is nothing for which you care overmuch," she said at

last. "Not for gold or the lack of it, not for friends or for enemies, not

even for yourself."

"I have known you for many years," he answered. "I have watched you grow

from a child into a gracious and beautiful woman. Do you not think that I

care for you, Evelyn?"

Near where he sat so many violets were blooming that they made a purple

carpet for the ground. Going over to them, she knelt and began to pluck

them. "If any danger threatened me," she began, in her clear, low voice,

"I believe that you would step between me and it, though at the peril of

your life. I believe that you take some pleasure in what you are pleased

to style my beauty, some pride in a mind that you have largely formed. If

I died early, it would grieve you for a little while. I call you my

friend."

"I would be called your lover," he said.

She laid her fan upon the ground, heaped it with violets, and turned again

to her reaping. "How might that be," she asked, "when you do not love me?

I knew that you would marry me. What do the French call it,--mariage de

convenance?"

Her voice was even, and her head was bent so that he could not see her

face. In the pause that followed her words treetop whispered to treetop,

but the sunshine lay very still and bright upon the road and upon the

flowers by the wayside.

"There are worse marriages," Haward said at last. Rising from the log, he

moved to the side of the kneeling figure. "Let the violets rest, Evelyn,

while we reason together. You are too clear-eyed. Since they offend you,

I will drop the idle compliments, the pretty phrases, in which neither of

us believes. What if this tinted dream of love does not exist for us? What

if we are only friends--dear and old friends"-He stooped, and, taking her by the busy hands, made her stand up beside

him. "Cannot we marry and still be friends?" he demanded, with something

like laughter in his eyes. "My dear, I would strive to make you happy; and

happiness is as often found in that temperate land where we would dwell as

in Love's flaming climate." He smiled and tried to find her eyes, downcast

and hidden in the shadow of her hat. "This is no flowery wooing such as

women love," he said; "but then you are like no other woman. Always the

truth was best with you."

Upon her wrenching her hands from his, and suddenly and proudly raising

her head, he was amazed to find her white to the lips.