"Whenever I think of you," he said, in a different tone, "I feel ashamed of myself. I have freedom, of a certain sort, and you've never had a chance to learn the meaning of the word. You're dominated, body and soul, by a couple of old women who haven't discovered, as yet, that the earth is round and not flat."
Freedom
"My soul isn't bound," returned Rosemary, softly, "but it would have been, if it hadn't been for you."
"I? Why, my dear girl, what have I done?"
"Everything. Think of all the books you've loaned me, all the candles you've given me--all the times you've climbed this steep hill just to talk to me for an hour and give me new strength to go on."
"It's only selfishness, Rosemary. I knew you were here and I like to talk to you. Don't forget that you've meant something to me, too. Why, you're the only woman I know, except my mother."
"Your mother is lovely," she returned. "I wish I could go to see her once in a while. I like to look at her. Even her voice is different someway."
"Yes, mother is 'different,'" he agreed, idly. "It's astonishing, sometimes, how 'different' she manages to be. We had it out the other day, about the vineyard, and I'm to stay here--all the rest of my life," he concluded bitterly.
"I don't see why, if you don't want to," she answered, half-fearfully. "You're a man, and men can do as they please."
"It probably seems so to you, but I assure you it's very far from the truth. I wonder, now and then, if any of us ever really do as we please. Freedom is the great gift."
Choosing
"And the great loneliness," she added, after a pause.
"You may be right," he sighed. "Still, I'd like to try it for a while. It's the one thing I'd choose. What would you take, if you could have anything you wanted?"
"Do you mean for just a little while, or for always?"
"For always. The one great gift you'd choose from all that Life has to give."
"I'd take love," she said, in a low tone. She was not looking at him now, but far across the valley where the vineyard lay. Her face was wistful in the half-light; the corners of her mouth quivered, ever so little.
Alden looked at her, then rubbed his eyes and looked at her again. In some subtle way she had changed, or he had, since they last met. Never before had he thought of her as a woman; she had been merely another individual to whom he liked to talk. To-day her womanhood carried its own appeal. She was not beautiful and no one would ever think her so, but she was sweet and wholesome and had a new, indefinable freshness about her that, in another woman, would have been called charm.