her with his thumb. "A great girl . . ." He looked down at Violet, dreamy again, and she up at him, as the dust-motes descended in the sun like Danae's gold. "I suppose," he said gravely, the bamboo stick swinging pendulum-fashion behind his back, "I suppose you think of me as old."
"You mean you think that's so."
"I'm not, you know. Not old."
"But you suppose, you expect . . ."
"I mean I think . . ."
"You're supposed to say 'I guess,'" she said, stamping her small foot and raising a butterfly from the sweet William. "Americans always say 'I guess,' don't they?" She put on a bumpkin basso: "I guess it's time to bring the cows in from the pasture. I guess there'll be no taxation without representation.—Oh, you know." She bent to smell flowers, and he bent with her. The sun beat down on her bare arms, and as though tormenting them made the garden insects hum and buzz.
"Well," he said, and she could hear the sudden daring in his voice. "I guess, then. I guess I love you, Violet. I guess I want you to stay here always. I guess . . ."
She fled from him along the flagged garden path, knowing that next he would take her in his arms. She fled around the next corner of the house. He let her go. Don't let me go, she thought.
What had happened? She slowed her steps, finding herself in a dark valley. She had come behind the shadow of the house. A sloping lawn fell away down to a noiseless stream, and just across the stream a sudden hill arose straight up, piney and sharp like a quiver of arrows. She stopped amid the yew trees planted there; she didn't know which way to turn. The house beside her was as gray as the yews, and as dreary. Plump stone pillars, oppressive in their strength, supported flinty stringcourses that seemed purposeless, covert. What should she do?
She glimpsed Drinkwater then, his white suit a paleness loitering within the stone cloister; she heard his boots on the tiles of it. In a change, the wind pointed the yews' branches toward him, but she wouldn't look that way, and he, abashed, said nothing; but he came closer.
"You mustn't say those things," she said to the dark Hill, not turning to him. "You don't know me, don't know . . ."
"Nothing I don't know matters," he said.
"Oh," she said, "oh . . ." She shivered, and it was his warmth that caused it; he had come up behind her, and covered her now with his arms, and she leaned against him and his strength. They walked on together thus, down to where the full-charged stream ran foaming into a cave's mouth in the hillside and was lost. They could feel the cave's damp and stony breath; he held her closer, protecting her from what seemed the cold infection of it that made her shiver. And from within the circle of his arms she told him, without tears, all her secrets.
"Do you love him, then?" Drinkwater said when she had done. "The one who did this to you?" It was his eyes that were bright with tears.
"No. I didn't, ever." It had never till this moment mattered. Now she wondered what would hurt him more, that she loved the one who had done this to her or did not (she wasn't even absolutely certain which one it was, but he would never, never know that). Sin pressed on her. He held her like forgiveness.
"Poor child," he said. "Lost. But no more. Listen to me now. If. . ." He held her at arm's length, to look into her face; the single eyebrow and the thick lashes seemed to shutter it. "If you could accept me . . . You see, no stain on you can make me think less of you; I'd still be unworthy. But if you could, I swear the child will be raised here, one of mine." His face, stern with resolve, softened. He almost smiled. "One of ours, Violet. One of many."
Now at last the tears came to her eyes, wondering tears at his goodness. She hadn't before thought of herself as in terrible trouble; now he had offered to save her from it. What goodness! Father had hardly noticed.
Lost, though, yes; that she knew herself to be. And could she find herself here? She left his touch again, and went around the next corner of the house, beneath