"'What suggested the wild West to your mind, Miss Keeldar? Have you been with me in spirit when I did not see you? Have you entered into my day-dreams, and beheld my brain labouring at its scheme of a future?"
"She had separated a slip of paper for lighting tapers—a spill, as it is called—into fragments: she threw morsel by morsel into the fire, and stood pensively watching them consume. She did not speak.
"'How did you learn what you seem to know about my intentions?'
"'I know nothing: I am only discovering them now: I spoke at hazard.'
"Your hazard sounds like divination. A tutor I will never be again: never take a pupil after Henry and yourself: not again will I sit habitually at another man's table—no more be the appendage of a family. I am now a man of thirty: I have never been free since I was a boy of ten. I have such a thirst for freedom—such a deep passion to know her and call her mine—such a day-desire and night-longing to win her and possess her, I will not refuse to cross the Atlantic for her sake: her I will follow deep into virgin woods. Mine it shall not be to accept a savage girl as a slave—she could not be a wife. I know no white woman whom I love that would accompany me; but I am certain Liberty will await me, sitting under a pine: when I call her she will come to my log-house, and she shall fill my arms.'
"She could not hear me speak so unmoved, and she was moved. It was right—I meant to move her.
