"I am–crazy with love of you."

"But to call me beautiful–poor old Debby!"

"You are beautiful; you're the handsomest woman I know."

"Me–with my white hair!"

"White roses. I don't know what's happened to you. You're not the woman I talked to at Asaph's, at all. You're like a girl–with silver hair–only you've got a woman's big heart, and you haven't the selfishness of the young, but that kind of wonderful sadness that sweetens a soul more than anything else."

Meldrum was as much amazed as Deborah was at hearing such rhapsodies from his matter-of-fact soul.

Her comment was prosaic enough. She fell back and sighed.  "Well, I guess both of us must be crazy."

"I guess we are."  He laughed boyishly.  "We'd better get married and keep the insanity in one family."

"Get married!" she echoed, still befuddled.  "And after you telling me what you did!"

"Yes, but I didn't know the Lord was at work on a masterpiece like you–girl, woman, grandmother, child, beauty, brains–all in one."

Deborah was as exhausted by the shock as if she had been stunned by lightning. She was tired out with the first kiss an impassioned man had ever pressed upon her lips, the first bone-threatening hug an ursine lover had ever inflicted upon her wicker ribs.

She was more afraid of Newt Meldrum than she had been of Asaph. But when she told him she would think it over he declined to wait. He laughed at her pleas. She had promised to abide by his decision, and he had decided that she should go neither to Asaph's nor to Crawford's, but to New York–not as any old buyer, either, except of things for her own beautiful body and some hats for that fleecy white hair of hers. And she should live in New York, take her mother there if she wanted, and close up this house after they had been married in it.

She had been shaking her head to all these things and dismissing them gently as the ravings of a delirious boy. But now she said: "Oh, I could never be married in this town."

"And why not?"

"Oh, I don't know. I just couldn't."

She was still afraid that people would laugh at her, but 

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