“To-morrow?” There was a touch of anxious haste in the inquiry.
“Are you so impatient?” smiled Steele.
Saxon wheeled on his host, and on his forehead were beads of perspiration though the breeze across the hilltops was fresh with the coming of evening. His answer broke from his lips with the abruptness of an exclamation.
“My God, man, I’m in panic!”
The Kentuckian looked up in surprise, and his bantering smile vanished. Evidently, he was talking with a man who was suffering some stress of emotion, and that man was his friend.
For a moment, Saxon stood rigidly, looking away with drawn brow, then he began with a short laugh in which there was no vestige of mirth:
“When two men meet and find themselves congenial companions,” he said slowly, “there need be no questions asked. We met in a Mexican hut.”
Steele nodded.
“Then,” went on Saxon, “we discovered a common love of painting. That was enough, wasn’t it?”
Steele again bowed his assent.