Don't do it, darling--it's folly."
Hard-pressed, Johnnie made only a sort of inarticulate response.
"Come, love, sit a moment with me, here," pleaded Gray, indicating a
small bench hidden among the evergreens and shrubs at the end of the
path. "Sit down, and let's reason this thing out."
"Reasoning with you," began Johnnie, helplessly, "isn't--it isn't
reasonable!"
"It is," he told her, in that deep, masterful tone which, like a true
woman, she both loved and dreaded. "It's the height of reasonableness.
Why, dear, the great primal reason of all things speaks through me. And
I won't let you throw away a year of our love. Johnnie, it isn't as
though we'd been neighbours, and grown up side by side. I came from the
ends of the earth to find you, darling--and I knew my own as soon as
I saw you."
He put out his arms and gathered her into a close embrace.
For a space they rested so, murmuring question and reply, checked or
answered by swift, sweet kisses.
"The first time I ever saw you, love...."
"Oh, in thoze dusty old shoes and a sunbonnet! Could you love me then,
Gray?"
"The same as at this moment, sweetheart. Shoes and sunbonnets--I'm
ashamed of you now, Johnnie, in earnest. What do such things matter?"
"And that morning on the mountain, when we got the moccasin flowers,"
the girl's voice took up the theme.
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