"That's over and done with. He's probably here somewhere, come through with a train that's scattered. And, anyway, you can't do any good by thinking about him."
This time the false reassurances came with the pang that the dead man was rousing in tardy retribution.
"I should like to know it," she said wistfully, "to feel sure. It's the only thing that mars our happiness. If I knew he was safe and well somewhere there'd be nothing in the world for me but perfect joy."
Her egotism of satisfied body and spirit jarred upon him. The passion she had evoked had found no peace in its fulfillment. She had got what he had hoped for. All that he had anticipated was destroyed by the unexpected intrusion of a part of himself that had lain dead till she had quickened it, and quickening it she had killed his joy. In a flash of divination he saw that, if she persisted in her worry over David, she would rouse in him an antagonism that would eventually drive him from her. He spoke with irritation:
"Put him out of your mind. Don't worry about him. You can't do any good, and it spoils our love."
After a pause, she said with a hesitating attempt at cajolery:
"Let me and Daddy John drive into the valley and try and get news of him. We need supplies and we'll be gone only two or three days. We can inquire at the Fort and maybe go on to Sacramento, and if he's been there we'll hear of it. If we could only hear, just hear, he was safe, it would be such a relief. It would take away this dreary feeling of anxiety, and guilt too, Low. For I feel guilty when I think of how we left him."
"Where was the guilt? You've no right to say that. You understood we had to go. I could take no risks with you and the old man."
"Yes," she said, slowly, tempering her agreement with a self-soothing reluctance, "but even so, it seemed terrible. I often tell myself we couldn't have done anything else, but——"
Her voice dropped to silence and she sat staring out at the quiet night, her head blurred with the filaments of loosened hair.