"_Really, Austin_, don't come near me, please; you're altogether too _barny_. Don't you think you're carrying your devotion to the nobility of labor a little too far, and your devotion to me--if you still have any--not quite far enough? You're slipping straight back to your old slovenly, disagreeable ways--without the excuse that you formerly had that they were practically the only ways open to you. If you're too proud to accept my money and the freedom that it can give you, and so stubborn that you make a scene and then won't come near me for days because I refuse to go to a cheap little public dance with you--"
She got no farther. Austin interrupted her with a violence of which she would not have believed him capable.
"_If_! If you're too stubborn to go with me to my sister's _graduation ball_, and too proud to accept the fact that I'm a _farmer_, with a farmer's friends and family and work, and that _I'm damned glad of it_, and won't give them up, or be supported by any woman on the face of the earth, or let her make a pet lap-dog of me, you can go straight back to the life you came from, for all me! You seem to prefer it, after all, and I believe it's all you deserve. If you don't--don't ask my forgiveness for the things you've said the last two times I've seen you, and say _you'll go to that party_ with me, and be just as darned pleasant to every one there as you know how to be--and promise to stop quarrelling, and keep your promise--I'll never come near you again. You're making my life utterly miserable. You won't marry me, and yet you are bound to have me make love to you all the time, when I'm doing my best to keep my hands off you--and I'd rather be shot _than_ marry you, on the terms you're putting up to me at present! You've got two days to think it over in, and if you don't send for me before it's time to start for the ball, and tell me you're sorry, you won't get another chance to send for me again as long as you live. I'm either not worth having at all, or I'm worth treating better than you've seen fit to do lately!"
He left her, without even looking at her again, in a white heat of fury. But before the hot dawn of another June day had given him an excuse to get up and try to work off his feelings with the most strenuous labor that he could find, he had spent a horrible sleepless night which he was never to forget as long as he lived. His anger gave way first to misery, and then to a panic of fear. Suppose she took him literally--though he had meant every word when he said it--suppose he lost her? What would the rest of his life be worth to him, alone, haunted, not only by his senseless folly in casting away such a precious treasure, but by his ingratitude, his presumption, and his own unworthiness? A dozen times he started towards her house, only to turn back again. She _hadn't_ been fair. They _couldn't_ be happy that way. If he gave in now, he would have to do it all the rest of his life, and she would despise him for it. As the time which he had stipulated went by, and no message came, he suffered more and more intensely--hoped, savagely, that she was suffering, too, and decided that she could not be, or that he would have heard from her; but resolved, more and more decidedly, with every hour that passed, that he would fight this battle out to the bitter end.