"I'm sorry," said the girl in a low voice, "I can't promise that. Last week, perhaps, but"—with a strange little sigh of inevitability, "not now, Dad. I'm sorry," Sard looked sadly into his face, "I can't promise."
The Judge was stupefied. "Can't promise?" he queried. "Can't promise? But I gave you my orders! Do you realize what you're saying?"
"Courage!" Shipman's low voice, pleading for human understanding, came to her. And another voice, the calm, thoughtful voice of Colter. She saw and recognized instantly her kinship with this soul that had come to her so strangely; she knew that she read it right and that no matter what its oblivion and dismay, it had come to her, belonged to her. Yet with all youth's insecurity and doubt she realized, too, that she could hardly trust herself. Her eyes widened, deepened; with a sudden strange, wild gesture she threw herself forward. Her arms went half-way about her father's neck. "Oh, help me," she begged, "help me! Don't you see that I can't promise? Oh, Father," wept Sard, "why should we two be like this?"
It was perhaps the truest sign, had the girl but known it, of the depth of feeling that had been born in her. When a woman truly loves, her heart goes out to all those with whom she has a relationship under the great new trouble; for her there must be no small meanness, no stabbing dislikes, no impatience. When a woman truly loves, she is tender to the world.
"I can't promise that," the girl wept desperately; "won't you help me, Dad?"
But she might as well have asked help from the automobile. With a strange gesture of disgust and spurning the Judge held her coldly off. What he said was reiterated with majesty. He slowly raised the cigar in his hand and looked at it. Suddenly, with a bitter ejaculation, a short wry shake of the whole body, he flung it away. He passed the slender figure that had thrown itself miserably on the turf at his side and walked rapidly toward the house.
No one saw the Judge that long summer evening; his study was vacant. The talking-machine was silent, his goldfish pool, where he often sat feeding the fishes, was deserted; and yet the whole place, forbidding and shadowed, seemed full of his personality.
So Sard could not go to the house, she could not see Miss Aurelia, discuss the trial, conjecture as to Minga's and Dunstan's whereabouts. The girl, her body aching, her eyes half blind with surging thoughts, wandered to the little fruit orchard. It seemed to her that the gray ancient trees, like good little crones, welcomed her, and that the long grass and the rifts of leaves and patches of starred sky spoke to her. "You are part of us, Sard; we have struggled and fought, too; we have followed instincts and been smitten and wounded. You are like us, Sard, you have come into our laws."
The part of the orchard where the girl threw herself down was dense and deep and its dimness cooled her heart and mind. Concealed from the murmurings of the house and garden, she lay pondering. The kind little old trees mothered her; she opened young eyes and stared pitifully at them, now clenching her hands and softly crying, now softly opening them and shuddering.
"As if I had done something wrong! As if I had done something wrong!"