“Which shows that you are a wicked and silly lad to talk thus to a Boer girl,” she answered, turning away with a smile on her lips and tears in her eyes, for his words had pleased her mind and touched her heart.
He looked at her, and she seemed so sweet and beautiful as she stood thus, smiling and weeping together as the sun shines through summer rain, that, so he told me afterwards, something stirred in his breast, something soft and strong and new, which caused him to feel as though of a sudden he had left his boyhood behind him and become a man, aye, and as though this fresh-faced manhood sought but one thing more from Heaven to make it perfect, the living love of the fair maiden who until this hour had been his sister in heart though not in blood.
“Suzanne,” he said in a changed voice, “the horses are tired; let them rest, and let us sit upon this stone and talk a little, for though we have never visited it for many years the place is lucky for you and me since it was here that our lives first came together.”
Now although Suzanne knew that the horses were not tired she did not think it needful to say him nay.
Presently they were seated side by side upon a stone, Suzanne looking straight before her, for nature warned her that this talk of theirs was not to be as other talks, and Ralph looking at Suzanne.
“Yes,” she answered; “what is it?” But he made no answer, for though many words were bubbling in his brain, they choked in his throat, and would not come out of it.
“Suzanne,” he stammered again presently, and again she asked him what it was, and again he made no answer. Now she laughed a little and said:
“Ralph, you remind me of the blue-jay in the cage upon the _stoep_ which knows but one word and repeats it all day long.”
“Yes,” he replied, “it is true; I am like that jay, for the word I taught it is ‘Suzanne,’ and the word my heart teaches me is ‘Suzanne,’ and—Suzanne, I love you!”
Now she turned her head away and looked down and answered:
“I know, Ralph, that you have always loved me since we were children together, for are we not brother and sister?”
“No,” he answered bluntly, “it is not true.”
“Then that is bad news for me,” she said, “who till to-day have thought otherwise.”