He was fingering his big note book.
"I can't start anything till the railway runs," he answered, tapping on the book, "but when it runs—I'll show you when we get up there."
They came to a quagmire in the red clay of the road. It was an ancient trap left over from the rains of winter, strewn with twigs and small branches so that light wheels might skim, with luck, over its shaking holes.
"You see," he said, pursuing his thought, "lorries wouldn't do here.
They'd sink."
"They would," she agreed, and found that his innocence of her secret locked her words more tightly in her throat. Far above, from an iron peak, the light of the heavy sun was slipping. Beneath it they ran in shadow, through rock and moss. Before the light had gone they had reached the first crest and drew up for a moment at a movement of his hand.
Looking back to Charleville, he said, "See where the river winds. The railway crosses it three times. Can we see from here if the bridges are all down?" And he stood up and, steadying himself upon her shoulder, peered down at Charleville, to where man lived in the valleys. But though the slopes ahead of them were still alight, depths, distance, the crowding and thickening of twilight in the hollows behind them offered no detail.
"I fear they are," she said, gazing with him. "I think they are. I think
I can remember that they are."
Soon they would be at the top of the long descent on Revins. Should she tell him, he who sat so close, so unsuspecting? An arrowy temptation shot through her mind.
"Is it possible—Why not write a letter when he is gone!"
She saw its beauty, its advantages, and she played with it like someone who knew where to find strength to withstand it.