Her young men friends were not apt to express disapproval of her. She resented it. She tried to put on her worldly drawl.

“I didn’t see joining the church. It seemed rather archaic to me. I tried to get by without it, but it simply didn’t go down. I had to either give in and join or hurt my little old, sweet grandmother—” She finished her explanation flippantly and looked up with what was meant to be a daring glance at her companion, and she found such a look of sorrow in his eyes that her tone failed miserably. After an instant she dropped her eyes again and sat there, with all the still breezes and the vaulted sky and the blue bed of flowers at her feet dropping away from her and leaving her a lone, little, arrogant atom in a world that had just been full of song and sunshine and now seemed to have withdrawn from her its joy.

After a little that seemed a long while, the young man beside her uttered a single syllable, just a long-drawn breath of a word that almost sobbed as it became audible, like the sound of a soul who was pulling from his own heart a barbed weapon that had gone deep and was trying to be brave, but the pain of it made his breath quiver.

“Oh!”

Chapter 3

For a long moment she sat there suddenly covered with shame. She had hurt him. She had pulled down the beautiful vision of herself that he had conjured up and dragged it in the dust.

Why had she been so foolish? Why had she not just kidded him along, asked a few questions, anything to keep him talking for the few minutes they would stay here, and let him think her all that he seemed to want to think? What difference did it make what he thought about her anyway? This was only one morning out of her life. She would likely never see him again or if she did, their ways would not touch again. This was only an incident. Why did she have to be so awfully honest and spoil all their nice time? It was ridiculous. What was it all about anyway?

And then she looked up to try with bright words to regain her place in his estimation. What was he? A country innocent apparently. She must make him snap out of this, show him how foolish and archaic and childish his present attitude was. And so she forced her eyes to look into his and see all the pain and all the disillusion and all the actual dismay that her words had brought him, and she was covered with a shame she had never known before.

She perceived that this attitude of his mind was a basic part of him, something she would never be able to reason out of him nor change, and she had shocked him. He had set her up as a sort of saint, had idealized her, and she had made him understand that she was just a flesh-and-blood girl, a modern person of the world. Well, he had to learn sooner or later that dreams and visions did not go to make up a world in these days. Best laugh it off. He was flesh and blood himself. Couldn’t she laugh him out of this?

“You take it as solemnly as if you were my priest,” she said in a flippant tone.

“No,” he answered quickly, “it’s not what you’ve done to me—though I didn’t know that anyone, not anyone with a face like yours, could stand up and take solemn vows upon them that they didn’t mean—but it’s what you’ve done to my Lord! You’ve mocked Him! You’ve taken vows upon you that you did not mean to perform. You have desecrated the cup of the blood covenant.”

There was such deep pain in his words that Constance was almost stunned for a moment. She drew herself up and looked at him half-bewildered.

“I don’t see why that’s such a dreadful thing to do!” she said crossly. “If it pleased my grandmother I think it was a good thing to do.”

“Would it have pleased your grandmother if she had known that you were only playacting?”

The brown eyes looked searchingly at her and she shivered. She felt as if there was suddenly a God—though she had not believed so for a long time—and that He was standing right there beside her looking into her soul and seeing all her empty vanities, tossing aside her foolish, worthless virtues on which she had so greatly relied.

“She will never know,” said Constance with a toss of her head.

“Perhaps not,” said the young man sadly. “But God knows. It is He, after all, that is hurt. It is He that matters. Not I! Not your grandmother!”

Constance was still a long time. Her throat was hot; her eyes were smarting; the great vaulted sky and the valley were blurred into one with the blue flowers at her feet.