"Bother Philip! You'd suppose the man was a sort of watch-dog. I believe you're afraid of me to-night," he teased, turning her face to his.
Her lips trembled as he kissed them. "It is so dark," she whispered.
"Little goose! Why should the darkness make a difference to you and me?"
"I don't know—but it does." Suddenly she pushed him away, and jumped to her feet. "Give me the matches, Mr. Channing. I want to light the lantern and go back."
He obeyed with a shrug, wondering just where and how he had blundered. A sense of artistic incompleteness mingled with a keen personal sense of chagrin. Did the girl care less for him than he had thought? Or was it merely the instinct of self-preservation that had warned her?
Now that the blood ran more coolly in his veins, he blushed to realize that the instinct had been right.
They went back into the ravine, which, as Jacqueline had prophesied, had become as dark as a pocket. Without the lantern they could not have seen a foot ahead of them, and even with the lantern their way was not easy. They stumbled along, still hand-in-hand and silent; but it was no longer the delicious, thrilling silence of the earlier adventure. The glamour of it seemed to have departed with the moon.
Jacqueline, stiff with an embarrassment she did not understand (she thought it the fault of the negligée and the stockingless feet) was eager to get back to the shelter of the crowded cabin. Channing was by this time as eager as herself, having discovered that riding-boots are not the most comfortable equipment for mountain tramping.
"There's our cornfield, at last!" said the girl, and both heaved sighs of relief.
They climbed laboriously toward the outline of corn stalks against the starlit sky, with a darker outline looming behind; but as they came into better sight of the cabin, she gave a cry of dismay.