Burke's quick movement of surprise told her that this was unexpected. The two horses had recovered their wind and begun to nibble at one another. He checked them with a growling rebuke. Then very quietly he placed Sylvia's bridle in her hand, and put her from him.
"Thank you," he said again. "But you mustn't be too generous at the outset. I might begin to expect too much. And that would be—silly of me, wouldn't it?"
There was no bitterness in voice or action, but there was unmistakable irony. A curious sense of coldness came upon her, as if out of the heart a distant storm-cloud an icy breath had reached her.
She looked at him rather piteously. "You are not angry?" she said.
He leaned back in the saddle to knock a blood-sucking fly off his horse's flank. Then he straightened himself and laughed.
"No, not in the least," he said.
She knew that he spoke the truth, yet her heart misgave her. There was something baffling, something almost sinister to her, in the very carelessness of his attitude. She turned her horse's head and walked soberly away.
He did not immediately follow her, and after a few moments she glanced back for him. He had dismounted and was scratching something on the trunk of the blasted tree with a knife. The withered arms stretched out above his head. They looked weirdly human in the sunset glow. She wished he would not linger in that eerie place.
She waited for him, and he came at length, riding with his head up and a strange gleam of triumph in his eyes.
"What were you doing?" she asked him, as he joined her.