As the preacher approached she looked around quickly but did not move from her caressing attitude by the tree.
"Good-morning, Phares. I'm glad you came. I was wishing for some one to share the old quarry with me this morning."
"Aunt Maria told me you were here--she is impatient for her pennyroyal." Now, that the supreme moment had arrived, he hesitated and grasped at the first straw for conversation.
"Oh, dear," she said childishly, "Aunt Maria expects me to remember ants and pennyroyal when I come here. Phares, I can't explain it, but this old quarry has a strange fascination for me. The beauty in its variegated stone with the sunlight upon it attracts me. Sometimes I am tempted to climb up the hill and hang over the quarry and look down into the heart of it."
"Don't ever do that!" cried the preacher.
"I won't," laughed Phœbe. "I don't want to die just yet. But isn't it the loveliest place! I come here often when the men are not blasting. It seems almost a desecration to blast these rocks when we think how long nature took in their making."
She paused . . . only the sounds of nature invaded the quiet of the place: the drowsy hum of diligent bees, the cattle browsing in a field near by, the ecstatic trill of a bird. The world of bustle and flurry with its seething vats of evil and corruption, its sordid discontent and petulance, its ways of pain and darkness, seemed far removed from that place of peace and calm solitude. Phœbe could not bear to think that across the seas men were lying in the filth of water-soaked trenches, agonizing and bleeding on the battlefields and suffering nameless tortures in hospitals that a peace like unto the peace of her quiet haven might brood undisturbed over the world in future generations. She dismissed the harrowing thought of war--she would enjoy the calm of her quarry.
The preacher had listened silently to the girl's rhapsodies--she suddenly awakened to the realization that he was paying scant attention to her enthusiastic words. She looked at him, her heart-beats quickened, some intuition warned her of the imminent declaration.
She rose quickly from the embrace of the sycamore tree, but the compelling eyes of the preacher restrained her from flight. She stood before him, within reach of his hands.