He stopped in front of her.
“Why didn’t you answer my letter, Barbara?”
“I couldn’t read it,” she murmured, a sudden vivid color fluttering in her cheeks. “Jimmy lost it on the way home from the office, and it lay out in the rain a week. I knew, though, that you were not—dead.”
“And that I had not forgotten you,” he urged. “You must have wondered, though, why I had not written before. But I couldn’t. I swore when I went away that I would get money—somehow. That I would get enough to save you out of the slavery you were in then. I meant to hire a caretaker for your father, a nurse for the boy. But I had the devil’s own luck. Three times I won, only to lose. Then I made a little pile—not enough; but still I thought—I hoped—— Do you want me to tell you what I hoped, Barbara?”
“No,” she said faintly. “I—can’t listen.”
“Why?” he urged. “Do you—love someone else?”
She looked at him imploringly.
“You were here, and you know——”
“Yes,” he said sharply. “I know what happened. You must have been out of your mind with anxiety, Barbara, to have thought of such a thing. Why did you do it?”
“I wanted to save the farm—for Jimmy.”