The glass she held fell from her fingers and rolled to the foot of the bed, scattering its contents abroad unobserved, as she threw her other arm across him and lifted him for the air she supposed he needed. Their breaths mingled. Human nature is but human nature, man is but man and woman is but woman in the final analysis: they were in the hands of a fate stronger than either of them at that moment.
Elizabeth struggled no more; right or wrong, it had happened, and she brought her rocking chair and with her free hand clasped in his, read and took life as it came. After that, sin nor sickness could keep them from being happy. If the girl talked of the better course of restoring the old reserve, Hugh’s hand would reach out imploringly:
“Only till I get well, dearest; I won’t trouble your conscience after that. I know you don’t feel right about this, but I can’t go back to a life without any affection again while I’m here,” and Elizabeth always responded to that call. She reflected that even Luther could not condemn her for it.
Yet when John was in the house or whenever she was obliged to be careful about Hepsie, as she often was, she was outraged in her own sight, and her colours trailed in the dust of humiliation, for she saw that the path she was treading was one of unaccustomed duplicity.
“If I could only approve of myself,” she said to Hugh, and then was sorry she had spoken, for Hugh Noland’s face grew more white and he closed his eyes with a little sob.
“Oh, my darling,” he said when he could speak again, “you long for that and I like you for it too, but I’m weak. I want to be loved and petted, and—I’m so tired that I don’t want to think about it at all. Kiss me, sweet,” and Elizabeth kissed him, and was glad in spite of herself.
“You shall not have to think till you’re well,” she promised, and the days ran on throughout the blazing summer, and Hugh improved, and Elizabeth won Doctor Morgan’s admiration as a nurse.
In the midst of the deceptions which Elizabeth Hunter was called upon to practise, however, she followed the natural trend of her character in ways which proved how fundamental truth and outrightness were in her make-up. Having discussed Hugh with Luther, she told Hugh that she had done so. This gave Hugh a wrong impression of affairs between the two which she was obliged to set right.
“No, Luther never loved me—that is, he never said that he did. That isn’t the way we feel about each other. We’ve just been good friends always. We herded cattle together and told each other things all our lives. I could tell Luther anything.”
“Well, he couldn’t love that black-eyed thing he lives with,” Hugh said.