He had not seen her or even heard her. He stood there looking toward the house she had left, and seeing, as it seemed, nothing else. Only the darkness had hidden her from him. His eyes were fixed upon the dim light that burned in Dolly's window. She had not meant to speak until she stood close to him; but when she was within a few paces of him her excitement mastered her.
“Grif,” she cried out; “Grif, is it you?”
And when he turned, with a great start, to look at her, she was upon him,—her hands outstretched, the light upon her face, the tears streaming down her cheeks,—sobbing aloud.
“Mollie,” he answered, “is it you?” And she saw that he almost staggered.
She could not speak at first. She clung to his arm so tightly that he could scarcely have broken away from her if he had tried. But he did not try; it seemed as though her touch made him weak,—weaker than he had ever been before in his life. Beauty as she was, they had always thought her in some way like Dolly, and, just now, with Dolly's gay little scarlet shawl slipping away from her face, with the great grief in her imploring eyes, with that innocent appealing trick of the clinging hands, she might almost have been Dolly's self.
Try as he might, he could not regain his self-control. He was sheerly powerless before her.
“Mollie,” he said, “what has brought you here? Why have you come?”
“I have come,” she answered, “for Dolly's sake!”
The vague fear he had felt at first caught hold upon him with all the fulness of its strength.
“For Dolly's sake!” he echoed. “Nay, Dolly has done with me, and I with her.” And though he tried to speak bitterly, he failed.