"Virginia!" He had called her so of late. "Yes, dear."

"Virginia, sit here a moment; I have something to tell you."

She came and took the chair beside him, her heart beating, her breast
rising and falling. She looked into his eyes, and her own lashes fell
before the hopelessness there But he put out his fingers wasted by
illness, and she took them in her own.

He began slowly, as if every word cost him pain.

"Virginia, we were children together here. I cannot remember the time
when I did not love you, when I did not think of you as my wife. All I
did when we played together was to try to win your applause. That was my
nature I could not help it. Do you remember the day I climbed out on the
rotten branch of the big pear tree yonder to get you that pear--when I
fell on the roof of Alfred's cabin? I did not feel the pain. It was
because you kissed it and cried over me. You are crying now," he said
tenderly. "Don't, Jinny. It isn't to make you sad that I am saying this.

"I have had a great deal of time to think lately, Jinny, I was not
brought up seriously,--to be a man. I have been thinking of that day just
before you were eighteen, when you rode out here. How well I remember it.
It was a purple day. The grapes were purple, and a purple haze was over
there across the river. You had been cruel to me. You were grown a woman
then, and I was still nothing but a boy. Do you remember the doe coming
out of the forest, and how she ran screaming when I tried to kiss you?
You told me I was good for nothing. Please don't interrupt me. It was
true what you said, that I was wild and utterly useless, I had never
served or pleased any but myself,--and you. I had never studied or