“Going away—from me, Charity?”
“From everybody. I want you should leave me.”
He stood glancing doubtfully up and down the lonely forest road that stretched away into sun-flecked distances.
“Where were you going?'
“Home.”
“Home—this way?”
She threw her head back defiantly. “To my home—up yonder: to the Mountain.”
As she spoke she became aware of a change in his face. He was no longer listening to her, he was only looking at her, with the passionate absorbed expression she had seen in his eyes after they had kissed on the stand at Nettleton. He was the new Harney again, the Harney abruptly revealed in that embrace, who seemed so penetrated with the joy of her presence that he was utterly careless of what she was thinking or feeling.
He caught her hands with a laugh. “How do you suppose I found you?” he said gaily. He drew out the little packet of his letters and flourished them before her bewildered eyes.
“You dropped them, you imprudent young person—dropped them in the middle of the road, not far from here; and the young man who is running the Gospel tent picked them up just as I was riding by.” He drew back, holding her at arm's length, and scrutinizing her troubled face with the minute searching gaze of his short-sighted eyes.