“Did you really think you could run away from me? You see you weren't meant to,” he said; and before she could answer he had kissed her again, not vehemently, but tenderly, almost fraternally, as if he had guessed her confused pain, and wanted her to know he understood it. He wound his fingers through hers.
“Come let's walk a little. I want to talk to you. There's so much to say.”
He spoke with a boy's gaiety, carelessly and confidently, as if nothing had happened that could shame or embarrass them; and for a moment, in the sudden relief of her release from lonely pain, she felt herself yielding to his mood. But he had turned, and was drawing her back along the road by which she had come. She stiffened herself and stopped short.
“I won't go back,” she said.
They looked at each other a moment in silence; then he answered gently: “Very well: let's go the other way, then.”
She remained motionless, gazing silently at the ground, and he went on: “Isn't there a house up here somewhere—a little abandoned house—you meant to show me some day?” Still she made no answer, and he continued, in the same tone of tender reassurance: “Let us go there now and sit down and talk quietly.” He took one of the hands that hung by her side and pressed his lips to the palm. “Do you suppose I'm going to let you send me away? Do you suppose I don't understand?”
The little old house—its wooden walls sun-bleached to a ghostly gray—stood in an orchard above the road. The garden palings had fallen, but the broken gate dangled between its posts, and the path to the house was marked by rose-bushes run wild and hanging their small pale blossoms above the crowding grasses. Slender pilasters and an intricate fan-light framed the opening where the door had hung; and the door itself lay rotting in the grass, with an old apple-tree fallen across it.
Inside, also, wind and weather had blanched everything to the same wan silvery tint; the house was as dry and pure as the interior of a long-empty shell. But it must have been exceptionally well built, for the little rooms had kept something of their human aspect: the wooden mantels with their neat classic ornaments were in place, and the corners of one ceiling retained a light film of plaster tracery.
Harney had found an old bench at the back door and dragged it into the house. Charity sat on it, leaning her head against the wall in a state of drowsy lassitude. He had guessed that she was hungry and thirsty, and had brought her some tablets of chocolate from his bicycle-bag, and filled his drinking-cup from a spring in the orchard; and now he sat at her feet, smoking a cigarette, and looking up at her without speaking. Outside, the afternoon shadows were lengthening across the grass, and through the empty window-frame that faced her she saw the Mountain thrusting its dark mass against a sultry sunset. It was time to go.
She stood up, and he sprang to his feet also, and passed his arm through hers with an air of authority. “Now, Charity, you're coming back with me.”