"Don't apologize or explain to me, it's not necessary; I understand everything you feel. It was only because I had given you my word to be back by sunset that I left off following their trail. I was afraid that you might think me dead or that something had happened and—"
"I should, I did," admitted the girl. "It wasn't so bad during the day time, but when the sun went down and you did not come I began to imagine everything. I saw myself left alone here in these mountains, helpless, wounded, without a human being to speak to. I could not bear it."
"But I have been here alone for five years," said the man grimly.
"That's different. I don't know why you have chosen solitude, but I—"
"You are a woman," returned the other gently, "and you have suffered, that accounts for everything."
"Thank you," said Enid gratefully. "And I am so glad you came back to me."
"Back to you," reiterated the man and then he stopped. If he had allowed his heart to speak he would have said, back to you from the very ends of the world—"But I want you to believe that I honestly did not leave the trail until the ultimate moment," he added.
"I do believe it," she extended her hand to him. "You have been very good to me, I trust you absolutely."
And for the second time he took that graceful, dainty, aristocratic hand in his own larger, stronger, firmer grasp. His face flushed again; under other circumstances and in other days perhaps he might have kissed that hand; as it was he only held it for a moment and then gently released it.
"And you think they are searching for me?" she asked.