"
"I believe so," he answered. He was thinking that those red lips of
hers had once kissed his, that August morning when he stood on the
green, ready to march with the minute men.
"My Aunt Woodbridge is very sick. If your men make a noise again in
front of my uncle's house, she will die. I came to--to ask"--she had
to say it--"you to prevent it."
"I will prevent it," said Perez.
Desire dropped an almost imperceptible curtsey, raised the latch of
the door and went out.
All through the interview, even when she had overheard Elnathan's
confidences to Perez, at the door, her cheeks had not betrayed her by
a trace of unusual color, but now as she hurried home across the
fields, they burned with shame, and she fairly choked to think of the
vulgar familiarity to which she had submitted, and the abject attitude
she had assumed to this farmer's son. She remembered well enough that
childish kiss, and saw in his eyes that he remembered it. This
perception had added the last touch to her humiliation.
But Perez went out and wandered into the wood-lot and sat down on a
fallen tree, and stared a long time into vacancy with glowing eyes. He
had dreamed of Desire a thousand times during his long absence from
home, but since his return, so vehement had been the pressure of
domestic troubles, so rapid the rush of events, that he had not had
time to once think of her existence, up to the moment when she had
confronted him there in the kitchen, in a beauty at once the same, and
so much more rare, and rich and perfect, than that which had ruled his
boyish dreams.
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