"Thank you, Mr. Rollins, you are very thoughtful and very kind to me."
They walked out into the darkness. After a turn or two in silence she took the arm he proffered. He admired the bravery with which she was trying to convince him that she was not so bitterly disappointed. When she finally spoke her voice was soft and cool, just as a woman's always is before the break.
"He was to have taken me to his uncle's house, six miles up in the country. His aunt and a young lady from the South, with Mr. Dudley and me, are to go to Eagle Nest to-morrow for a month."
"How very odd," he said with well-assumed surprise. "I, too, am going to
Eagle Nest for a month or so."
She stopped stock-still, and he could feel that she was staring at him hardly.
"You are going there?" she half whispered.
"They say it is a quiet, restful place," he said. "One reaches it by stage over-land, I believe." She was strangely silent during the remainder of the walk. Somehow he felt amazingly sorry for her. "I hope I may see something of you while we are there," he said at last.
"I imagine I couldn't help it if I were to try," she said. They were in the path of the light from the window, and he saw the strange little smile on her face. "I think I'll lie down again. Won't you find a place to sleep, Mr. Rollins? I can't bear the thought of depriving you—"
"I am the slave of your darkness," he said gravely.
She left him, and he lit another cigar. Daylight came at last to break up
his thoughts, and then his tired eyes began to look for the man and buggy.
Fatigued and weary, he sat upon his steamer trunk, his back to the wall.
There he fell sound asleep.