Not a sound broke the stillness, yet the very air, it
seemed to them, was shedding meanings: the flowers were exhaling
a love secret with their fragrances, the birds were singing it
boldly from the tree-tops, yet no word passed the man's lips or
the girl's. Patty would have hung out all sorts of signals and
lures to draw the truth from Ivory and break through the walls of
his self-control, but Waitstill, never; and Ivory Boynton was
made of stuff so strong that he would not speak a syllable of
love to a woman unless he could say all. He was only
five-and-twenty, but he had been reared in a rigorous school, and
had learned in its poverty, loneliness, and anxiety lessons of
self-denial and self-control that bore daily fruit now. He knew
that Deacon Baxter would never allow any engagement to exist
between Waitstill and himself; he also knew that Waitstill would
never defy and disobey her father if it meant leaving her younger
sister to fight alone a dreary battle for which she was not
fitted. If there was little hope on her side there seemed even
less on his. His mother's mental illness made her peculiarly
dependent upon him, and at the same time held him in such strict
bondage that it was almost impossible for him to get on in the
world or even to give her the comforts she needed.
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