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“No!” he exclaimed, firmly, lifting his head, and looking at her. The inscrutable expression in his dark gray eyes was stronger than before, and all his features were more clearly drawn. He reminded her of a picture of Adam which she had once seen: there was the same rather low forehead, straight, even brows, full yet strong mouth, and that broader form of chin which repeats and balances the character of the forehead. He was not positively handsome, but from head to foot he expressed a fresh, sound quality of manhood.

Another question flashed across Miss Bartram’s mind: Is life long enough to transform this clay into marble? Here is a man in form, and with all the dignity of the perfect masculine nature: shall the broad, free intelligence, the grace and sweetness, the taste and refinement, which the best culture gives, never be his also? If not, woman must be content with faulty representations of her ideal.

So musing, she walked on to the farm-house. Leonard had picked up one of the blossoms she had let fall, and appeared to be curiously examining it. If he had apologized for his want of grammar, or promised to reform it, her interest in him might have diminished; but his silence, his simple, natural obedience to some powerful inner force, whatever it was, helped to strengthen that phantom of him in her mind, which was now beginning to be a serious trouble.

Once again, the day before she left the Rambo farmhouse to return to the city, she came upon him, alone. She had wandered off to the Brandywine, to gather ferns at a rocky point where some choice varieties were to be found. There were a few charming clumps, half-way up a slaty cliff, which it did not seem possible to scale, and she was standing at the base, looking up in vain longing, when a voice, almost at her ear, said:

“Which ones do you want?”

Afterwards, she wondered that she did not start at the voice. Leonard had come up the road from one of the lower fields: he wore neither coat nor waistcoat, and his shirt, open at the throat, showed the firm, beautiful white of the flesh below the strong tan of his neck. Miss Bartram noticed the sinewy strength and elasticity of his form, yet when she looked again at the ferns, she shook her head, and answered:

“None, since I cannot have them.”

Without saying a word, he took off his shoes, and commenced climbing the nearly perpendicular face of the cliff. He had done it before, many a time; but Miss Bartram, although she was familiar with such exploits from the pages of many novels, had never seen the reality, and it quite took away her breath.

When he descended with the ferns in his hand, she said: “It was a great risk; I wish I had not wanted them.”

“It was no risk for me,” he answered.

“What can I send you in return?” she asked, as they walked forwards. “I am going home to-morrow.”

“Betty told me,” Leonard said; “please, wait one minute.”

He stepped down to the bank of the stream, washed his hands carefully in the clear water, and came back to her, holding them, dripping, at his sides.

“I am very ignorant,” he then continued,–“ignorant and rough. You are good, to want to send me something, but I want nothing. Miss Bartram, you are very good.”

He paused; but with all her tact and social experience, she did not know what to say.

“Would you do one little thing for me–not for the ferns, that was nothing–no more than you do, without thinking, for all your friends?”

“Oh, surely!” she said.

“Might I–might I–now,–there’ll be no chance tomorrow,–shake hands with you?”

The words seemed to be forced from him by the strength of a fierce will. Both stopped, involuntarily.

“It’s quite dry, you see,” said he, offering his hand. Her own sank upon it, palm to palm, and the fingers softly closed over each, as if with the passion and sweetness of a kiss. Miss Bartram’s heart came to her eyes, and read, at last, the question in Leonard’s. It was: “I as man, and you, as woman, are equals; will you give me time to reach you?” What her eyes replied she knew not. A mighty influence drew her on, and a mighty doubt and dread restrained her. One said: “Here is your lover, your husband, your cherished partner, left by fate below your station, yet whom you may lift to your side! Shall man, alone, crown the humble maiden,–stoop to love, and, loving, ennoble? Be you the queen, and love him by the royal right of womanhood!” But the other sternly whispered: “How shall your fine and delicate fibres be knit into this coarse texture? Ignorance, which years cannot wash away,–low instincts, what do YOU know?–all the servile side of life, which is turned from you,–what madness to choose this, because some current of earthly magnetism sets along your nerves? He loves you: what of that? You are a higher being to him, and he stupidly adores you. Think,–yes, DARE to think of all the prosaic realities of life, shared with him!”