“And now at last you will be able to go home to your friends,” he said.
She was silent.
“I wanted to speak to you about the ranch,” he continued, a little nervously. “I have set my mind on buying the place, and carrying out Robert’s ideas. I hope you will give me the opportunity. If you look over his papers, you will find at what figure he valued his property. I only speak of it, because I thought that the certainty of being able to sell the ranch and receive money down at once, might make it all the easier for you, now that the line is open, to arrange your plans, and return home.”
“Home?” she echoed, as though in sudden pain.
Ben started.
“Yes,” he said quickly, “back to the life for which you have been hungering ever since you came, back to all those interests which you threw away, and then so bitterly regretted. Now your path is clear before you, and you can go straight on, and forget that you ever took a side-turning which led you to uncongenial pastures. Not every one can do that.”
“The old life!” she said wildly, “what does one want with the old life? What do I care about returning? Why should I go home?”
For a moment Ben Overleigh’s heart leapt within him. Why should she go home? These words were on his very lips, and others came rushing afterwards, struggling and wrestling for utterance. The storm raging around and within him for so many weeks, now assailed him with all its fury—and left him standing as firm as those mountains yonder.
“Why should you stay?” he said calmly; “you have said all along that this Californian life was detestable to you, and that you could never reconcile yourself to it. Have you forgotten that afternoon when you poured out your confidences to me, and eased your mind of your misery? Do you remember how you spoke of the isolation, the fearful distance from home, and the absence of stimulus, and the daily drudgery, and the mistake you had made in coming out to such a wretched land, and to such a starved existence?”
“Oh, I have not forgotten,” she said excitedly; “that was the first long breath I’d taken since I left England.”