Markham's silence had a double meaning. They were at odds just now. A while back Hermia had starved for food. He meant now that she should starve for company. He wanted to think, too, to analyze and weigh his own culpability in the situation where they now found themselves. The imprudence of their venture had not seemed to matter so much back at Evreux, where accident had thrown them together and Hermia had linked her fate to his. She had been little more to him then than an extraordinarily interesting specimen of a genus he little understood, a rebellious slave of convention who had shown him the shackles which galled her wrists and had pleaded with him very prettily to help her strike them off. Could any man have refused her? And yet he had known from that hour that a retribution of some sort awaited them both—Hermia, for ignoring her code; himself, for having permitted her to ignore it. There was a difference now—a difference which their discovery by an outsider had made unpleasantly manifest. De Folligny's appearance at Verneuil had made Markham thoughtful, but Olga's intrusion now had paraphrased their pastoral lyric into unworthy prose. Parnassus wept with them, but no amount of weeping could destroy the ugly doggerel as Olga had written it. Their idyl was smirched, the fair robe of Euterpe was trialing in the dust.
But it was too late for reproaches now. The mischief was done and one thing only left—to emerge with as good a grace as possible from a doubtful position. As the moments passed it became more clear to Markham in which way his duty lay—and the more he thought of it, the more he was convinced that it lay out of Vagabondia. Hermia must go—this very day—and he—to beard their pretty tigress.
The shadow of his thoughts fell upon his brows, and to Hermia, who watched him, when she could do so unobserved, he presented a countenance upon which gloom sat heavily enthroned.
Had he spoken his thoughts as they came to him she could not have read him more easily; and, as Markham gloomed, her own mood lightened. Though she spoke not, a dull fire slumbered in her eye which boded him mischief. Disaster had befallen—and some one was to pay for it; but his bent head was unaware of the smile that suddenly grew, a pale wintry smile which matched the devil in her eyes.
They camped in the mellow afternoon under the trees upon a rugged mountain that guarded the defile, through which a rushing torrent, one of the tributaries of the Oire, dashed over the rocks on its swift course to Argentan. Below them in the valley were a village and a railroad along which a tiny passenger train was slowly proceeding. Markham eyed the train with a grave and melancholy interest. They both observed that it stopped in the village to let off and take on passengers. He built his fire with great deliberateness, gloomy and silent as though performing a last rite for one departed, and ate solemnly, his face long.
At last she could stand the stress of him no longer and burst suddenly into a fit of laughter which echoed madly among the rocks.
"Oh, John Markham!" she cried. "Why so triste? The melancholy sweetness of seeing Olga again?"
"No," he replied calmly. "I was thinking—of other things."
"What?"
A smile broke over his lips. He had been right. There was nothing in the world that a woman has greater pains to endure than silence. He had starved her out.