For answer she gave a long sigh of relief. "I thought you had gone!" she said. "Is it late?"
The man looked at the girl lying there in the long grass. It was a different Sard Bogart from any he had seen and known since the early spring, since that March day when she had rescued him. He could not look at her thus. Something instinctive and delicate made Colter turn his head away and remain standing. Under the trees he stood immovable, like a statue, thinking with utmost concern upon this prostrate, abandoned grief of youth. He stood, his back to her, looking out toward the slow gathering stars.
His quiet, the absolute calm of him, made Sard wonder. Suddenly she sat up; her hands went to her hair. She was glad he could not see her eyes and wondered if he could have heard her sobbing. Again, inquiringly, she looked at the tall thin form with its broad shoulders and the head, nobly poised, set to a listening attitude.
"If we are very quiet," said Colter at last, "we can hear the wind freshening down the river." Somehow, she knew it was the way he took to quiet her. She was hushed like a storming child.
After a few seconds: "I did not hear you come." She tried to say it naturally, but her relief, the long shuddering sigh, struck into him. The man, his face still turned away, murmured something.
"I did not hear you." Sard rose and went toward him in the dark.
"Perhaps I should not have come," he said. He carefully kept the senses of mistress and employed between them. "But I was very anxious. Shall I go?"
"No." The girl's voice, under his steady leadership, grew clearer. Sard began to get herself together. Here was someone who understood, who needed few words and who, she was convinced, cared. Sard only thought that word "cared." She dared not think the word "love," with its overwhelming waves.
She stood there twisting a piece of grass in nervous fingers. "Father told me!" She said it with a kind of helpless shame. "I am so sorry that you are going, Colter. You seemed so happy lately—and I—I believed that we could help you, take you back to yourself, give you life again."
For answer the man turned and gave her one swift look.