She did not answer him, but went on weeping.
"What's more, I ain't _a-going_ to stand it," he added savagely. "I ain't _a-going_ to let you go back a-tall. Talk about home!--there's a home right acrosst the fence. We can make it any way we like. It'll do to start with, anyhow. Here's where you belong--you don't belong back there in them dirty cities. You belong right out here--with me."
"I couldn't--I can't," said Annie. "I couldn't let her go back alone. I got to take care of that kid."
"She ain't blind no more," said Wid. "But she don't have to go back! This here place where we stand is hers, ain't it? What more does she want? And we'd be right here, too, all the time, to help her and watch her, wouldn't we, now?"
"You don't know her," said Annie Squires. "I do."
"But, Annie," he went on, "you'd ought to see this out here in the valley when the spring comes! It's green, all green! The sage has got five different colors of green in it--you wouldn't think that, would you? And some blue. And you ain't seen the mountains yet when they're white with snow on them--that's something you got to see fer to know what a mountain is. And look at that little creek--it's plumb gentle up here, ain't it? It's pretty, here. You ought to see the moonlight on the meadows when the moon is full,--I was telling you about that, Annie."
"I ain't never been married in my life," he went on, arguing now. "I ain't never seen a woman that I loved or looked at twicet but you. I was too damn lazy to care anyway about anything till I seen you. I just been drifting and fooling along. But now I ain't. I want to go to work. I want to be somebody. Why, Annie, I reckon all the time I was homesick, and didn't know it. But I tell you it wouldn't be no home unless you was in it with me. I ain't fit to ask you to run it fer me. But I do!"
It was the ancient story, even told direct in the open, unwhispered, even told now, at such an hour and place. She did not answer at all, but her sobbing had ceased. He stood still frowning, looking at her, his hat pushed back from his forehead.
"I can't say no more'n I have," he concluded. "Years and years, Annie. Wouldn't it settle a heap of things?"
"I got to have some sort of time to think things over, haven't I, then?" She spoke with apparent venom, as though this were an affront that had been offered her.