his senses.

He kissed the pure young lips and drank in greedily their exquisite
sweetness, then he said somewhat less harshly:

"You are too pretty, my dove, to put on those modern airs of emancipated
womanhood. If you only knew how much better you please me like this,
than when you try to argue with me, you would always use your power over
me, you little goose."

She made no reply, for, despite the warm woollen shawl round her
shoulders, she had suddenly felt cold, and a curious shiver had gone
right through her body, even whilst her future lord did kiss her. But no
doubt it was because just then an owl had hooted in the poplar trees far
away.

"You are coming back then, Bela?" she asked, after a few seconds of
silence and with enforced cheerfulness.

"I'll think about it," he said condescendingly.

"But . . ."

"There, now, don't begin again," he broke in impatiently. "Haven't I
said that I'll think about it? You run back to your mother now. I may
come later--or I may not. But if you bother me much more I certainly
won't. If I come, I come of my own free will; there's no woman living
who has ever persuaded me to do anything against my will."

And without vouchsafing her another word or look, without deigning to
see her safely on her way back to the barn, he turned leisurely on his
heel, and mounting the steps of the verandah before him, he presently
pushed open the tap-room door and disappeared within.

CHAPTER XXIV

"If you loved me."

Elsa stood for a moment quite still there in the dark, with the silence
of the night and all its sweet sounds encompassing her, and the scent of
withered flowers and slowly-dying leaves mounting to her quivering
nostrils.

What did it all mean? What did life mean? And what was the meaning of
God? She, the ignorant, unsophisticated peasant girl, knew nothing save
what Pater Bonifacius had taught her, and that was little enough--though
the little was hard enough to learn.

Resignation to God's will; obedience to parents first and to husband
afterwards; renunciation of all that made the days appear like a
continual holiday and filled the nights with exquisite dreams!

But if life only meant that, only meant duty and obedience and
resignation, then why had God made such a beautiful world, why had He
made the sky and the birds and the flowers, the nodding plumes of maize
and the tiny, fleecy clouds which people the firmament at sunset?

Was it worth while to d