.
But it came on me like a thunderbolt--I never felt that way
before--even when I was first engaged, even when I was married! But I
don't know whether that's love, or whether it's just you--the
extraordinary effect of you! You belong to one of the hardest parts of
my life, and at first, last night, I thought it was just seeing you
again--like any other old friend. Now--this morning--I don't know." She
stopped, distressed. The man was silent. "If I've really made you
unhappy, it will kill me, I think," Martie began, again, pleadingly.
"How can I go on into this marriage feeling that you are lonely and
hurt about it?"

They had sat down on the old iron bench that had for fifty years stood
rooted in the earth far down at the end of the garden, under pepper
trees and gnarled evergreens and rusty pampas grass.

"I thought you would marry me," John said, "and that we would go to
live in the farmhouse with the white rocks."

His tone made her eyes fill again.

"I'm sorry," she said.

"Yes, but I can't leave it this way, Martie," John said. "If I DID come
suddenly upon you, if I DID take you by surprise: why, I can give you
time. You can have all the time you want! I'll stay here in the
village--at the hotel, and see you every day, and we'll talk about it."

"Talking wouldn't make you anything but a divorced man, John," she said.

"But you can't blame me for that--Adele did that!"

"Yes, I know, dear. But the fact is a fact, just the same."

"But--" He began some protest eagerly; his voice died away.

"See here, John." Martie locked her hands about the empty, battered pan
that had held the chickens' breakfast. "I was a girl here, ten years
ago, and I gave my parents plenty of trouble. Then I married, and I
suffered--and paid--for that. Then I came home, shabby and sad and
poor, and my father and sister took me in. Now comes this opportunity
to make a good man happy, to give my boy a good home, to make my father
and sisters proud and satisfied, to do, in a word, the dutiful, normal
thing that I've been failing to do all these years! He loves me,
and--I've known him since I was a child--I do truly love him. This is
July--we are to be married in August."

"You are NOT!" he said, through set jaws.

"But I am. I've always been a trial and a burden to them, John--I could
work my hands to the bone, more, I could write another 'Mary Beatrice'
without giving them half the joy that this marriage will give!"

"That's the k