Did she love him? Yes, she loved him, if she knew what such love was. She believed that it involved more of a willingness to be receptive to him than a more passionate and active emotion. Did she know him? Yes, she had always known him, never remembered when he was not trying to please her. When she was a child and he had seemed to her already a grown man, he had given her such special looks, and a softer consideration than he gave to anyone else. It was that particular kindness he evidenced toward her alone that had finally disposed her to have him, and not Deborah’s unceasing advocacy of his suit.

Nothing could have persuaded her to accept him if she had not decided that, whatever he was to others, to her he had always been and would always be gentle, a gentle man. She was ignorant, and she knew it. The only knowledge she had of the private side of the relationship of a man and a woman was from the shocked observation she had once made of her brother and the Negro girl Clovis, such ages ago she should have forgot it. They were mere animals. It would be different for her, she knew; but she did not know how. She tried once to open the subject with her Aunt Nell, but that lady only looked at her in a mild, puzzled way and suggested to the girl that preliminary speculation was of no value in her opinion, and that as for her, she believed she could say that she and Selma’s uncle had shared a long and near-perfect bliss—their joy marred only by their joint concern over the delicacy of her health. Perhaps that could not be considered a flaw in their happiness. Did it not, after all, bring them closer in the most loving regard and consideration? Was it not perhaps even the very flower instead of the thorn in their union? In any case, Selma was not to worry. She would be happy; Nell assured her she would be.

Over the rank reek of mud slime that always emanated from the creekbank, there was a scent from the woods of flowering blackberry and honeysuckle and scuppernong that gave such a fragrance to the day as declared it special and blessed. Without consciously deciding to, Selma suddenly brushed the canvas slippers off the log into the stream, as if in doing so she brushed her girlhood away and became a woman. The unexpectedness of the action provoked her to laughter. Watching the red canvas shoes float away and sink to the darkness of the creek’s depth, the girl stood up, bracing the sides of the log with firmed toes, and laughed until tears came; and then frightened a little at the unusual display she had made, she turned to go home.