“I shall never forget it, and that night,” she went on, closing her eyes faintly. “I thought he was dying. I had to have a doctor, but I was afraid to leave him. I remember how everything flashed through my mind. It was a decision for life or death. If I left him I knew I might never see him alive again, and yet if I did not——” She opened her eyes wide and clasped and unclasped her hands. “It was the most horrible moment of my life.”
“My poor child!” Miss Arbuthnot put her hand timidly on the girl’s arm. She suddenly felt absurdly inexperienced in her presence.
“I got Ivan’s saddle on him—I don’t know just how—and we started. It was about two o’clock I remember. The prairie looked just like the sea, at night—only more lonesome and quite silent. I was horribly frightened. Even Ivan was frightened. He trembled all over—it’s a terrible thing to see a horse tremble with fright.”
“Do you mean to say,” demanded Professor Arbuthnot, “that you rode twenty miles in the dead of night, alone upon a Texas prairie?”
“Yes,” answered the girl mechanically. “It was for Julian,” she added as if in entire explanation.
Miss Arbuthnot looked at her; she could not realize such wealth of courage and devotion. She wondered with a sudden, hot shame whether she would have dared it had she been in this girl’s place.
“I don’t think I ever prayed before—really prayed you know,” she ran on meditatively as if she had forgotten the Professor’s presence. “It was dawn when we got back.” She stopped entirely and looked out through the window onto the cool green campus. Miss Arbuthnot scarcely dared move. There was something so intimate, almost sacred in the girl’s revelations.
“Did he live?” she inquired softly at length.
The girl turned her face toward her. An almost illuminated look had come into it.
“Yes—the doctor saved his life, but he said if I had been two hours later——!”