gone on with it. I should have gone away. I knew it. And I considered you in the light of that knowledge, and yet … I did not go away. My God! what was I to do? I loved you. I could not go away. I could not help it. I stayed. I resolved, but I broke my resolves. I was like a drunkard. I was drunk of you. I was weak, I know. I failed. I could not go away. I tried. I went away—you will remember, though you did not know why. You know now. I went away, but I could not remain away. Knowing that we could never marry, I came back to you. I am here, now, with you. Send me away, Lute. I have not the strength to go myself.”
“But why should you go away?” she asked. “Besides, I must know why, before I can send you away.”
“Don’t ask me.”
“Tell me,” she said, her voice tenderly imperative.
“Don’t, Lute; don’t force me,” the man pleaded, and there was appeal in his eyes and voice.
“But you must tell me,” she insisted. “It is justice you owe me.”
The man wavered. “If I do …” he began. Then he ended with determination, “I should never be able to forgive myself. No, I cannot tell you. Don’t try to compel me, Lute. You would be as sorry as I.”
“If there is anything … if then are, obstacles … if this mystery does really prevent … ” She was speaking slowly, with long pauses, seeking the more delicate ways of speech for the framing of her thought. “Chris, I do love you. I love you as deeply as it is possible for any woman to love, I am sure. If you were to say to me now ‘Come,’ I would go with you. I would follow wherever you led. I would be your page, as in the days of old when ladies went with their knights to far lands. You are my knight, Chris, and you can do no wrong. Your will is my wish. I was once afraid of the censure of the world. Now that you have come into my life I am no longer afraid. I would laugh at the world and its censure for your sake—for my sake too. I would laugh, for I should have you, and you are more to me than the good will and approval of the world. If you say ‘Come,’ I will—”
“Don’t! Don’t!” he cried. “It is impossible! Marriage or not, I cannot even say ‘Come.’ I dare not. I’ll show you. I’ll tell you.”
He sat up beside her, the action stamped with resolve. He took her hand in his and held it closely. His lips moved to the verge of speech. The mystery trembled for utterance. The air was palpitant with its presence. As if it were an irrevocable decree, the girl steeled herself to hear. But the man paused, gazing straight out before him. She felt his hand relax in hers, and she pressed it sympathetically, encouragingly. But she felt the rigidity going out of his tensed body, and she knew that spirit and flesh were relaxing together. His resolution was ebbing. He would not speak—she knew it; and she knew, likewise, with the sureness of faith, that it was because he could not.
She gazed despairingly before her, a numb feeling at her heart, as though hope and happiness had died. She watched the sun flickering down through the warm-trunked redwoods. But she watched in a mechanical, absent way. She looked at the scene as from a long way off, without interest, herself an alien, no longer an intimate part of the earth and trees and flowers she loved so well.
So far removed did she seem, that she was aware of a curiosity, strangely impersonal, in what lay around her. Through a near vista she looked at a buckeye tree in full blossom as though her eyes encountered it for the first time. Her eyes paused and dwelt upon a yellow cluster of Diogenes’ lanterns that grew on the edge of an open space. It was the way of flowers always to give her quick pleasure-thrills, but no thrill was hers now. She pondered the flower slowly and thoughtfully, as a hasheesh-eater, heavy with the drug, might ponder some whim-flower that obtruded on his vision. In her ears was the voice of the stream—a hoarse-throated, sleepy old giant, muttering and mumbling his somnolent fancies. But her fancy was not in turn aroused, as was its wont; she knew the sound merely for water rushing over the rocks of the deep canyon-bottom, that and nothing more.
Her gaze wandered on beyond the Diogenes’ lanterns into the open space. Knee-deep in the wild oats of the hillside grazed two horses, chestnut-sorrels the pair of them, perfectly matched, warm and golden in the sunshine, their spring-coats a sheen of high-lights shot through with color-flashes that glowed like fiery jewels. She recognized, almost with a shock, that one of them was hers, Dolly, the companion of her girlhood and womanhood, on whose neck she had sobbed her sorrows and sung her joys. A moistness welled into her eyes at the sight, and she came back from the remoteness of her mood, quick with passion and sorrow, to be part of the world again.
The man sank forward from the hips, relaxing entirely, and with a groan dropped his head on her knee. She leaned over him and pressed her lips softly and lingeringly to his hair.
“Come, let us go,” she said, almost in a whisper.
She caught her breath in a half-sob, then tightened her lips as she rose. His face was white to ghastliness, so shaken was he by the struggle through which he had passed. They did not look at each other, but walked directly to the horses. She leaned against Dolly’s neck while he tightened the girths. Then she gathered the reins in her hand and waited. He looked at her as he bent down, an appeal for forgiveness in his eyes; and in that moment her own eyes answered. Her foot rested in his hands, and from there she vaulted into the saddle. Without speaking, without further looking at each other, they turned the horses’ heads and took the narrow trail that wound down through the sombre redwood aisles and across the open glades to the pasture-lands below. The trail became a cow-path, the cow-path became a wood-road, which later joined with a hay-road; and they rode down through the low-rolling, tawny California hills to where a set of bars let out on the county road which ran along the bottom of the valley. The girl sat her horse while the man dismounted and began taking down the bars.
“No—wait!” she cried, before he had touched the two lower bars.
She urged the mare forward a couple of strides, and then the animal lifted over the bars in a clean little jump. The man’s eyes sparkled, and he clapped his hands.
“You beauty! you beauty!” the girl cried, leaning forward impulsively in the saddle and pressing her cheek to the mare’s neck where it burned flame-color in the sun.
“Let’s trade horses for the ride in,” she suggested, when he had led his horse through and finished putting up the bars. “You’ve never sufficiently appreciated Dolly.”
“No, no,” he protested.
“You think she is too old, too sedate,” Lute insisted. “She’s only sixteen, and she can outrun nine colts out of ten. Only she never cuts up. She’s too steady, and you don’t approve of her—no, don’t deny it, sir. I know. And I know also that she can outrun your vaunted Washoe Ban. There! I challenge you! And furthermore, you may ride her yourself. You know what Ban can do; so you must ride Dolly and see for yourself what she can do.”
They proceeded to exchange the saddles on the horses, glad of the diversion and making the most of it.
“I’m glad I was born in California,” Lute remarked, as she swung astride of Ban. “It’s an outrage both to horse and woman to ride in a sidesaddle.”
