Well, I
noticed to-day, Mr. Farwell, the birch stands quite securely; it doesn't
bend for support on the hemlock, but it is standing friendly all the
same. I think"--and here Priscilla clasped her hands close and
outstretched them--"I think I am soon going away!"
Her eyes were tear-dimmed, her face very earnest.
"I wish--you would give up the childish folly, Priscilla." A fear rose
in Farwell's eyes. "What could you, such an one as you have become, do
out--in the States? It is madness--sheer, brutal madness."
Priscilla shook her head.
"You think it childish folly? Why, I have never lost sight of it for a
day. You have not understood me if you have imagined that. I have always
known I must go. Lately I have felt the nearness of the going, and it is
the _how_ to break away and begin that puzzle me. I am ready."
"Priscilla, you are a wild child still, playing with dangerous tools.
You cannot comprehend the trouble into which you are willing, in your
blindness, to plunge. Why, you are a--a woman; a beautiful one! Do you
know what the world does with such, unless they are guarded and
protected?"
"What does it do?" The true eyes held Farwell commandingly, and with a
sense of dismay he looked back at the only world he really knew: the
world of his own ungoverned passions and selfishness.
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