"Well?" he asked, pressing her to the answer. "What would have been
your reply?"
"I really don't know," she said honestly.
"You don't care for me?" he exclaimed. "I'm not the sort of chap
who--"
"Oh, it's not that!"
"Then, what?"
She met his eyes steadily. "It's--am I the sort of woman?"
He came close to her side, took her hand reverently as though its
preciousness made him fear the harm his heavy grip might do. And there,
under the network of apple branches interwoven with the patches of
a deep, blue sky, with now and then the sound of an apple tumbling
heavily to the ground, or a flight of starlings whirring overhead,
and in the distance the hollow monotonous beating on the tin drums
of the boy who scared the birds, he told her roughly, unevenly, in
words cut out of the solid vein of his emotion, what kind of a woman
he thought she was.
"No," she kept on whispering; "no, no."
But he paid no attention. He scarcely heard the word in the gentleness
of her voice. When he had finished, she took away her hand.
"That means nothing to you, then?" he said bitterly.
She gazed away through the lines of apple trees that hid the greater
distance from view.
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