“Only think,” she began suddenly, “that you and I might be lunching at—at the Manhattan together if things had been a little different.”
“Yes.” She was greatly encouraged by his immediate assent. He looked at his gray flannel shirt and at her patched riding skirt and went on. “We wouldn’t be dressed just as we are now, would we? And there would be music, instead of the sound of a stream, and a hundred voices talking all at once, instead of those two magpies chattering in the thicket. The fat lady at the next table—there always is one—might be wearing a beaver scarf made from the jacket of some furry little fellow that swam in that very pool below us, and the waiter might tell us that there was an unusual delicacy to-day—rainbow trout.”
She leaned forward, feeling bolder still.
“You haven’t forgotten,” she said, “and you will be coming back to it all some day. We know who you are. We want so much to have you belong to us again. Aren’t you coming back?”
“You know?”
He stood up suddenly and faced her. In that instant she knew that she had done wrong. The shadow of unforgettable pain swept over his face and the laughter died in his eyes.
“You know?” he repeated.
She did not trust herself to speak or even to look at him. Mutely she nodded keeping her wide, unseeing eyes on the fire, clenching her hands, holding her breath and waiting. There was a long, long pause.
He moved at last, strode to the fire and trod out the flames and the smouldering coals with his big boots.
“It is time we were going on,” he said. “You must reach Dr. Minturn’s before dark and I have none too much daylight left to climb my own trail.”