Then they fell to talk,—­he grateful, boastful,—­as the distant figures grew dim; she quickly assenting, but following his expression rather than his words, with her own girlish face and brightening eyes.  But what he said, or how he explained his position, with what speciousness he dwelt upon himself, his wrongs, and his manifold manly virtues, is not necessary for us to know, nor was it, indeed, for her to understand.  Enough for her that she felt she had found the one man of all the world, and that she was at that moment protecting him against all the world!  He was the unexpected, spontaneous gift to her, the companion her childhood had never known, the lover she had never dreamed of, even the child of her unsatisfied maternal yearnings.  If she could not comprehend all his selfish incoherences, she felt it was her own fault; if she could not follow his ignorant assumptions, she knew it was she who was deficient; if she could not translate his coarse speech, it was because it was the language of a larger world from which she had been excluded.  To this world belonged the beautiful limbs she gazed on,—­a very different world from that which had produced the rheumatic deformities and useless mayhem of her husband, or the provincially foppish garments of the deputy.  Sitting in the hayloft together, where she had mounted for greater security, they forgot themselves in his monologue of cheap vaporing, broken only by her assenting smiles and her half-checked sighs.  The sharp spices of the heated pine-shingles over their heads and the fragrance of the clover-scented hay filled the close air around them.  The sun was falling with the wind, but they heeded it not; until the usual fateful premonition struck the woman, and saying “I must go now,” she only half-unconsciously precipitated the end.  For, as she rose, he caught first her hand and then her waist, and attempted to raise the face that was suddenly bending down as if seeking to hide itself in the hay.  It was a brief struggle, ending in a submission as sudden, and their lips met in a kiss, so eager that it might have been impending for days instead of minutes.

“Oh, Sue! where are ye?”

It was her husband’s voice, out of a darkness that they only then realized.  The man threw her aside with a roughness that momentarily shocked her above any sense of surprise or shame:  She would have confronted her husband in his arms,—­glorified and translated,—­had he but kept her there.  Yet she answered, with a quiet, level voice that astonished her lover, “Here!  I’m just coming down!” and walked coolly to the ladder.  Looking over, and seeing her husband with the deputy standing in the barnyard, she quickly returned, put her finger to her lips, made a gesture for her companion to conceal himself in the hay again, and was turning away, when, perhaps shamed by her superior calmness, he grasped her hand tightly and whispered, “Come again tonight, dear; do!” She hesitated, raised her hand suddenly to her lips, and then quickly disengaging it, slipped down the ladder.