She shook at my arm. "Tell me!" she
said. But I would not tell her.
"Suppose they did not come," she said once more. "It is true, they may
not find us. Suppose we two were to live here alone, all this
winter--just as we are now--none of my people or yours near us. Could we
go on?"
"God! Woman, have you no mercy!"
She sat and pondered for yet a time, as though seriously weighing some
question in her mind.
"But you have taught me to think, John Cowles. It is you who have begun
my thinking, so now I must think. I know we cannot tell what may happen.
I ask you, 'John Cowles, if we were brought to that state which we both
know might happen--if we were here all alone and no one came, and if you
loved me--ah, then would you promise, forever and forever, to love me
till death did us part--till I was gone back into the flowers? I
remember what they say at weddings. They cling one to the other,
forsaking all others, till death do them part. Could you promise me--in
that way? Could you promise me, clean and solemn? Because, I would not
promise you unless it was solemn, and clean, and unless it was forever."
Strange, indeed, these few days in the desert, which had so drawn apart
the veil of things and left us both ready to see so far.
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