“But you’re not going on alone!”
“I’m not afraid. I’ve got my rifle. Besides, I’ll be at Murray’s before dark, and there, as you know, I shall be in good hands. But Claire will worry unless she knows where I am.”
“She’ll worry just the same.”
“No. She knows Mrs. Murray very well.”
“But–––”
“Good-by, Mr. Smythe!”
She reached her hand to him, and he took it reluctantly.
“It’s all wrong, Miss Gaylord!” he protested. “I’m convinced that I’m acting like a fool. If anything happens to you, I’ll–––”
“Nothing will happen to me. Good-by!”
Smythe watched her until she was swallowed up by the woods; he looked at the pines piling up to the distant crests of the mountains, mass on mass, and solitude enfolding deeper solitude; he listened to the long, low, rolling murmur of the forest, sweet but menacing. Then, with the inward comment that he was several kinds of a blithering idiot, he turned and rode back toward the Park, evolving various interesting but futile theories to explain the fact that he, a man of undoubted intelligence, had always acted the part of the giddy fool in moments of emergency. And there was Huntington––another fool! He could foresee a pretty dialogue between them.