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But Thomas started as if she had struck him, and dropped his spray of white flowers, and could not help a smothered cry that was half a sob, as he went on, knocking blindly against the bushes. He went a little way, then he stopped and looked back with his piteous hurt eyes. And Evelina had stopped also, and she had the spray of white flowers which he had dropped, in her hand, and her eyes met his. Then she let the flowers fall again, and clapped both her little hands to her face to cover it, and turned to run; but Thomas was at her side, and he put out his hand and held her softly by her white arm.

“Oh,” he panted, “I–did not mean to be–too presuming, and offend you. I–crave your pardon–“

Evelina had recovered herself. She stood with her little hands clasped, and her eyes cast down before him, but not a quiver stirred her pale face, which seemed turned to marble by this last effort of her maiden pride. “I have nothing to pardon,” said she. “It was I, whose bold behavior, unbecoming a modest and well-trained young woman, gave rise to what seemed like presumption on your part.” The sense of justice was strong within her, but she made her speech haughtily and primly, as if she had learned it by rote from some maiden school-mistress, and pulled her arm away and turned to go; but Thomas’s words stopped her.

“Not–unbecoming if it came–from the heart,” said he, brokenly, scarcely daring to speak, and yet not daring to be silent.

Then Evelina turned on him, with a sudden strange pride that lay beneath all other pride, and was of a nobler and truer sort. “Do you think I would have given you the look that I did if it had not come from my heart?” she demanded. “What did you take me to be–false and a jilt? I may be a forward young woman, who has overstepped the bounds of maidenly decorum, and I shall never get over the shame of it, but I am truthful, and I am no jilt.” The brilliant color flamed out on Evelina’s cheeks. Her blue eyes met Thomas’s with that courage of innocence and nature which dares all shame. But it was only for a second; the tears sprang into them. “I beg you to let me go home,” she said, pitifully; but Thomas caught her in his arms, and pressed her troubled maiden face against his breast.

“Oh, I love you so!” he whispered–“I love you so, Evelina, and I was afraid you were angry with me for it.”

“And I was afraid,” she faltered, half weeping and half shrinking from him, “lest you were angry with me for betraying the state of my feelings, when you could not return them.” And even then she used that gentle formality of expression with which she had been taught by her maiden preceptors to veil decorously her most ardent emotions. And, in truth, her training stood her in good stead in other ways; for she presently commanded, with that mild dignity of hers which allowed of no remonstrance, that Thomas should take away his arm from her waist, and give her no more kisses for that time.

“It is not becoming for any one,” said she, “and much less for a minister of the gospel. And as for myself, I know not what Mistress Perkins would say to me. She has a mind much above me, I fear.”

“Mistress Perkins is enjoying her mind in Boston,” said Thomas Merriam, with the laugh of a triumphant young lover.

But Evelina did not laugh. “It might be well for both you and me if she were here,” said she, seriously. However, she tempered a little her decorous following of Mistress Perkins’s precepts, and she and Thomas went hand in hand up the lane and across the fields.

There was no dew that night, and the moon was full. It was after nine o’clock when Thomas left her at the gate in the fence which separated Evelina Adams’s garden from the field, and watched her disappear between the flowers. The moon shone full on the garden. Evelina walked as it were over a silver dapple, which her light gown seemed to brush away and dispel for a moment. The bushes stood in sweet mysterious clumps of shadow.