“Let me be,” she said, keeping her face averted.
He saw the gleam of tears in her eyes, and felt himself a brute. Then, somehow, he scarcely knew how it happened, his arm was around her waist and he had kissed her. After that there was no more talk of her going. She sobbed herself into an ecstasy. They returned together.
“I thought that you wanted me gone,” she said, in a broken tone, mopping her eyes with her handkerchief. “I was so miserable.”
Strone was very uncomfortable. He almost wished that he had let her go. However, he made the best of it, hurried on the tea, and ignored sundry affectionate little overtures on her part. Afterward he chose for his seat an isolated rock, and pointed out to her a place beneath. However, he couldn’t avoid her resting her head upon his knee. She began to talk—volubly. It wasn’t very interesting—a long tirade—a record of her woes, fascinating to him, for it was a page from the life of one of his kind. What a bringing up! A father who drank, a mother to be passed over in dark silence, a squalid home, children unwholesome and unmanageable. What a struggle for respectability, and what would be the end of it, he wondered, as the light grew dimmer, the evening insects buzzed around them, and far down in the valley little yellow dots of light leaped into life. Then he rose up, and she sadly followed his example.
“I suppose I must go,” she said doubtfully.
“I am quite sure of it, if you want to get home to-night,” he answered. “I’ll carry your bicycle to the gate and light your lamp. You’ll remember what we’ve been talking about. You’ll read the books and be brave?”
“Yes.”
“Life isn’t always black. There’s a time when the clouds lift.”
“When may I come again?” she asked bluntly.
He took her hand gravely.