Young Lancaster drew up a chair, after she had smiled and reached him one of her hands. He looked at her critically for a moment.
"Dorothy," he said, "I have never seen you looking so pretty."
"I have never felt so happy, Dick," she said.
"I am happy, too. And yet, I am rather sorry. I have lived here all my life; this is the first time that I am going away from home. There is something solemn about it; but then--the end, oh, the end--justifies it all. That is not the chief reason why I am not altogether satisfied to go away. Dorothy, don't you know the other reason?"
She opened her eyes a little, and smiled a trifle at the corners of her mouth. "I, Dick, why, how should I know?" Then she saw that he looked hurt and she changed her tone. "Dick," she went on, "why won't you be sensible about it? I suppose you mean about me? Why, Dick, you know I like you, don't you? I've always liked you and admired you, but--dear me, can I help it if I feel sure that I don't like anyone yet--in that way? I'd like to, perhaps, but--well, I don't. What can I do?" She looked at him appealingly and reproachfully.
"I know, I know," he said, soothingly, "I'm an impetuous, thoughtless idiot, I'm afraid, and I hurt you. And, oh, Dorothy! don't you know I'd rather suffer torments unspeakable than hurt you?" He put out his hand and touched the one hand of hers that swung beside him, over the edge of the hammock. "But yet, dear," he went on, "if I only had a word from you to remember, be it ever so slight, I would fight so much better against the world. For it is the same to-day as it was in the middle ages; we go to our crusades, all of us, and if we have a sweetheart who will give us her love as an armor, we fight the better fight. Our crusades have a different air, to be sure, but the idea is the same. Don't you know, Dorothy, that if you only gave, me some little thing to cling to, I would feel a hundred times stronger. Come, Dorothy, it costs you little to say it!"
"But if I say that word, I must live up to it."
"True; your fair conscience would let you do nothing less. And yet, there are words so slight that they would cost you scarcely anything, while to me they would be coats of mail."
For a time there was silence, both looking out over the street where the school children were passing homewards. A buggy rattled by, throwing clouds of dust; then there was quiet again. "If you could say to me, Dorothy, 'Dick, I won't marry anyone until I see you again, until I come home again. And I'll try to like you--that way,' why, that would be enough for me."