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“Oh, if you want me to say what the grocer’s man says to the cook in the kitchen!”—he flushed—“but you know very well, Mona, that I am not going to insult your intelligence and mine with the clap-trap of passion. Certainly I’ve no such cheap sort of feeling for you, and I’m not such an infernal cad as to suppose you have——Mona?”

It might have been the wind that blew from the country beyond Broken Tree at that moment, or something in my face, that turned that last repetition of my name upon the point of interrogation. Though it was my crying objection to Herman that he could not produce in me those raptures and alarms and whirlings to and fro, out of which I knew all creative art to proceed, yet to have him so renounce for us both the possibility of such a relation filled me with sudden wounding and affront. And at that, or at some new shadow of wonder in his eyes with the turning of his voice upon the word, I found myself so little able to give back look for look, that it was a great relief to me to discover the hawk’s nest in the Broken Tree. The creek makes a turn here, and the stepping-stones were so far apart it was necessary for Herman to go ahead and reach me back his hand. As I swung past him I heard him say my name again with so new a touch of shamed credulity that I was glad to put my hand up over my eyes, making believe I had not heard him, and look very attentively at Broken Tree.