I ventured. I made that
journey to offer you my hand. I was two weeks late--you were already
wedded to Mr. Alston. Then I learned that happiness never could be
mine.... Yes, we must part! You are the only thing in life I fear. And
I fear as well for you. One wagging tongue in this hotbed of
gossip--and there is harm for you, whom all good men should wish to
shield."

As he rode, speaking thus, his were the features of a man of
tremendous emotions, a resolute man, a man of strength, of passions
not easily put down.

She turned aside her own face for an instant. At last her little hand
went to him in a simple gesture of farewell. Meriwether Lewis leaned
and kissed it reverently as he rode.

"Good-by!" said he. "Now we may go on for the brief space that remains
for us," he added a moment later. "No one is likely to ride this way
this morning. Let us go on to the old mill. May I give you a cup of
coffee there?"

"I trust Captain Meriwether Lewis," she replied.

They advanced silently, and presently came in sight of a little
cascade above a rocky shallowing of the stream. Below this, after
they had splashed through the ford, they saw the gray stone walls of
Rock Creek Mill.

The miller was a plain man, and silent. Other folk, younger or older,
married or single, had come hither of a morning, and he spoke the name
of none. He welcomed these two after his fashion. Under the shade of a
great tree, which flung an arm out to the rivulet, he pulled out a
little table spread in white and departed to tell his wife of the
company. She, busy and smiling, came out presently with her best in
old china and linen and wherewith to go with both.

They sat now, face to face across the little table, their horses
cropping the dewy grass near by. Lewis's riding crop and gloves lay on
his knee. He cast his hat upon the grass. Little birds hopped about on
the ground and flitted here and there in the trees, twittering. A
mocker, trilling in sudden ecstacy of life, spread a larger melody
through all the wood.

The sun drew gently up in the heavens, screened by the waving trees.
The ripple of the stream was very sweet.

"Theodosia, look!" said the young man, suddenly swinging a gesture
about him. "Did I not say right? It is Eden! Ah, what a pity it is
that Eden must ever be the same--a serpent--repentance--and farewell!
Yet it was so beautiful."

"A sinless Eden, sir."

"No! I will not lie--I will not say that I do not love you more