on
Melicent. Gregoire's adoration alone, and her feeble response to it
were all that kept her.

"I neva felt anything like this befo'," he said, as they stood
together and their hands touched in reaching for a splendid rose that
hung invitingly from its tall latticed support out in mid lawn. The
sun had come again and dried the last drop of lingering moisture on
grass and shrubbery.

"W'en I'm away f'om you, even fur five minutes, 't seems like I mus'
hurry quick, quick, to git back again; an' w'en I'm with you,
everything 'pears all right, even if you don't talk to me or look at
me. Th' otha day, down at the gin," he continued, "I was figurin' on
some weights an' wasn't thinkin' about you at all, an' all at once I
remember'd the one time I'd kissed you. Goodness! I couldn't see the
figures any mo', my head swum and the pencil mos' fell out o' my han'.
I neva felt anything like it: hones', Miss Melicent, I thought I was
goin' to faint fur a minute."

"That's very unwise, Gregoire," she said, taking the roses that he
handed her to add to the already large bunch. "You must learn to think
of me calmly: our love must be something like a sacred memory--a sweet
recollection to help us through life when we are apart."

"I don't know how I'm goin' to stan' it. Neva to see you! neva--my
God!" he gasped, paling and crushing between his nervous fingers the
flower she would have taken from him.

"There is nothing in this world that one cannot grow accustomed to,
dear," spoke the pretty philosopher, picking up her skirts daintily
with one hand and passing the other through his arm--the hand which
held the flowers, whose peculiar perfume ever afterwards made Gregoire
shiver through a moment of pain that touched very close upon rapture.

He was more occupied than he liked during those busy days of
harvesting and ginning, that left him only brief and snatched
intervals of Melicent's society. If he could have rested in the
comfort of being sure of her, such moments of separation would have
had their compensation in reflective anticipation. But with his
undisciplined desires and hot-blooded eagerness, her half-hearted
acknowledgments and inadequate concessions, closed her about with a
chilling barrier that staggered him with its problematic nature.
Feeling himself her equal in the aristocracy of blood, and her master
in the knowledge and strength of loving, he resented those half
understood reasons which removed him from the poss