"All right, old lady?"
"Yes--lovely."
The tone of his voice had made her heart bound. It was the dear old voice, speaking to her just as he used to speak before their bad time began.
"We'll be there sooner than you know where you are. I think I'll rest my bones a bit."
Then he got into the wagon, and carefully clambering over impediments came toward her. For a moment as he stood over her the sunlight was on his face, and she, looking up at him, thought that he was not only a fine but quite a beautiful man. The light seemed to soften and yet ennoble his features, and his eyes, unblinking in the glare, were blue and clear as water. When he sat down close to her little nest she pushed the basket away from her, and raising her hand laid it on his knees. To her delight he put his hand on hers, and left it there. He was in shadow now, showing a dark profile, and again she admired him--her strong, big, handsome man, her man that she was pining for.
"Will," she said tremulously, "don't move, but just look behind you, and tell me all you see."
"I don't see anything, Mav, unless I heft meself up again."
"No, sit as you are. It just bears out what you said. We're never more to look back. We're only to look forward. Will?"
He had taken his hand away, and turned the back of his head toward her.
"Will," she repeated; but he did not answer. "Will, my dear one, this is going to be a fresh start, isn't it? Like a new beginning for us."
"Yes," he said, very seriously, "that's what I build on its being. Take it so. You and I are beginning life again in our new home."
"Bless you for saying it. The one thing I wished to hear."
"Yes, we must help each other. I'll do--I mean to do. But, maybe, it'll be more 'v o' fight than I'm reckoning, and there's a many ways that you can make the fight easier--beyond the one great thing you've done a'ready."
"I will, dear. I will."
Then they were silent. The carter cracked his whip, shouted to his team, and whistled; and the horses, neither frightened by the whip nor excited by the whistling, drew the big wagon at exactly the same steady pace.
And Mavis felt as if her throat had suddenly enlarged itself and become too big for her collar, while her whole breast was swelling and hardening until it seemed so rigidly immense that it would burst all her garments; it was as if her whole being, together with all the thoughts or memories that it contained felt the expansion of some force that had been long gathering and now swiftly was released. In all her life she had experienced no such sensations hitherto. She who had been passive under the desires of others now felt desire active in herself. It was not only that she wanted pardon, kindness, companionship, the things that she had been so systematically deprived of; she wanted the man himself, the partner, and the mate to whom nature had given her a right.