"
"I'm sick of your eternal forgiveness," he retorted. "I've been forgiven
every time you got into a temper, and I suppose I'll be forgiven next
every time you are kissed." The "rousing" which had threatened every
Revercomb was upon him at last.
"Well, as a matter of fact it is time enough for you to forgive me when
I ask you to," she returned.
"You needn't ask. It's too much this time, and I'll be damned before I
will do it."
Bending over a grey skeleton of last year's golden-rod, she caressed it
gently, without breaking its ghostly bloom. Years afterward, when she
had forgotten every word he uttered, she could still see that dried
spray of golden-rod growing against the April sky--she could still hear
a bluebird that sang three short notes and stopped in the willows. In
the quiet air their anger seemed to rush together as she had sometimes
thought their love had rushed to a meeting.
"You have neither the right to forgive me nor to judge me," she said.
"Do you think I care what a man imagines of me who believes a thing
against me as easily as you do. If you went on your knees to me now I
should never explain--and if I chose to kiss every man in the county,"
she concluded in an outburst of passion, "you have nothing to do with
it!"
"Explain? How can a girl explain a man's kissing her, except by saying
she let him do it?"
"I did let him do it," she gasped.
Pages:
283
284
285
286
287
288
289
290
291
292
293
294
295
296
297
298
299
300
301
302
303
304
305
306
307