"Come," he added, "let us go to the boat and return to the house. Come, I am strong now, and I love you, Agnes, my own little woman--come with me."
He caught her with his unhurt arm and drew her hard against his side. With a swift, firm tread he went with her down to the landing, never faltering or wavering until he had fixed himself in the stern of the boat and directed her how to paddle out to the middle of the stream.
All this time he had been losing blood and his pain had been excruciating. He had made a grand effort, and now the reaction came with a power that he could not resist. He sank back with his head resting on his arm and lay there as white and lifeless as if dead. She thought him dead, and sat there numb and motionless, letting the boat drift with the gentle current. Every thing about her appeared shadowy, misty, unreal. Her heart scarcely beat. Why was it that, in the midst of this awful trial, there came to her mind a vivid memory of the short romance of her married life down on the old plantation by Mariana? Some of those days were dreamily happy ones with her wild boy husband--the days before discontent and trouble came. Why would the reckless blue eyes and curling, yellow hair waver before her, between the strong, pallid features of this man whom she now loved with such fervor?
Slowly the boat drifted on in the sunlight, between the reed-covered banks, bearing its strange load down toward the DeKay place. It was a dark touch with which to end so charming an idyl as the past few days had been; but life in the South favors the tragic and the melodramatic: it is the life of passion and of sudden changes.
One day, while Reynolds was gone to General DeKay's, White came home from Birmingham perfectly sober and with no gambling story to tell. Milly met him at the gate, as usual, with the same pitiful look of patient inquiry in her eyes. He chucked her under the chin and in an uncommonly cheery voice said:
"He air comin' home right away soon, Milly, I hev hearn from 'im straight. Go an' drive up the steer fer me, won't ye? I want er haul er jag er pine-knots purty soon."
"I don't b'lieve he air a comin', no sich a thing. I dremp he wer' married, an' thet's a sign o' death. How d'ye know he air a comin'?" She spoke almost pettishly, looking fixedly at her father, whose pale eyes wandered aimlessly from object to object.