Loll was there before them.
The little fellow, oblivious to everything but his loneliness and his loss, lay across the fresh turned earth. His bare head was buried in his outflung arms. One hand fiercely clutched a few bruised flowers and his small body shook with long, slow sobs.
Jean's throat tightened and tears of sympathy flooded her eyes. With outstretched arms she started impulsively forward to comfort him, but before she had taken a second step Harlan laid a detaining hand on her arm.
"Not now," he whispered. "Come."
He drew back along the trail. Wondering, she followed until they were out of earshot.
"We'll wait for him here at the top of the gulch, Jean." It was the first time he had called her that. Each was aware of a sudden, warming sense of comradeship—a sense of sharing something tender, sad.
They sat down on the crest of the hill, so close that only a single tundra daisy nodded between them in the deepening twilight.
"Why—why did you do that, Gregg?"
He did not answer at once. . . . Up from the sea came the susurrous voice of the reef whispering its eternal questions.
"Because—men, real men, bear their griefs silently, and alone," he said at last. "It is their way."