“Maybe you’re right,” yielded Bentley. “I think we’d just as well go to bed.”
“Just as well,” Walker agreed.
The chill of morning was in the air. As they went back the crowds had thinned to dregs, and the lights in many tents were out.
“She thinks a lot of him, doesn’t she?” observed Walker reflectively.
“Who?” asked Bentley, turning so quickly that it seemed as if he started.
“Miss Horton,” Walker replied. “And there’s class to that girl, I’m here to tell you!” 117
Agnes, in the darkness of her compartment, strained forward to catch the sound of the doctor’s voice when she heard them enter, and when she knew that he was not there a feeling which was half resentment, half accusation, rose within her. Was she to be disappointed in him at last? Had he no more strength in the happy light of his new fortune than to go out and “celebrate,” as she had heard the sergeant confidentially charging to Horace, like any low fellow in the sweating throng?
But this thought she put away from her with humiliation and self-reproach, knowing, after the first flash of vexation, that it was unjust. Her fears rose towering and immense again; in the silence of the graying morning she shivered, drawing her cold feet up into the cot to listen and wait.
Walker and Bentley had gone quietly to bed, and in the stillness around her there was an invitation to sleep. But for her there was no sleep in all that night’s allotment.
The roof of the tent toward the east grew transparent against the sky. Soon the yellow gleam of the new sun struck it, giving her a sudden warm moment of hope.