Without speech he slid his hand into the crook of her arm and they began to retrace their steps. She could feel his heart beating and the warm, sinewy grasp of his fingers clasped about hers. The plain was a silver floor for their feet, in the starless sky the great orb soared. The girl's embarrassment left her and she felt herself peacefully settling into a contented acquiescence. She looked up at him, a tall shape, black between her and the moon. Her glance called his and he gazed down into her eyes, a faint smile on his lips. His arm was strong, the way was strangely beautiful, and in the white light and the stillness, romance walked with them.
There was no talk between them till they reached the horses. In the darkness of the cleft, hidden from the searching radiance, he drew her to him, pressing her head with a trembling hand against his heart. She endured it patiently but was glad when he let her go and she was in the saddle, a place where she felt more at home than in a man's arms with her face crushed against his shirt, turning to avoid its rough texture and uncomfortably conscious of the hardness of his lean breast. She decided not to speak to him again, for she was afraid he might break forth into those protestations of love that so embarrassed her.
At the camp Daddy John was up, sitting by the fire, waiting for them. Of this, too, she was glad. Good-bys between lovers, even if only to be separated by a night, were apt to contain more of that distressful talk. She called a quick "Good night" to him, and then dove into her tent and sat down on the blankets. The firelight shone a nebulous blotch through the canvas and she stared at it, trying to concentrate her thoughts and realize that the great event had happened.
"I'm engaged," she kept saying to herself, and waited for the rapture, which, even if belated, ought surely to come. But it did not. The words obstinately refused to convey any meaning, brought nothing to her but a mortifying sensation of being inadequate to a crisis. She heard David's voice exchanging a low good night with the old man, and she hearkened anxiously, still hopeful of the thrill. But again there was none, and she could only gaze at the blurred blot of light and whisper "I'm engaged to be married," and wonder what was the matter with her that she should feel just the same as she did before.
CHAPTER IV
The dawn was gray when Susan woke the next morning. It was cold and she cowered under her blankets, watching the walls of the tent grow light, and the splinter between the flaps turn from white to yellow. She came to consciousness quickly, waking to an unaccustomed depression.
At first it had no central point of cause, but was reasonless and all-permeating like the depression that comes from an unlocated physical ill. Her body lay limp under the blankets as her mind lay limp under the unfamiliar cloud. Then the memory of last night took form, her gloom suddenly concentrated on a reason, and she sunk beneath it, staring fixedly at the crack of growing light. When she heard the camp stirring and sat up, her heart felt so heavy that she pressed on it with her finger tips as if half expecting they might encounter a strange, new hardness through the soft envelope of her body.
She did not know that this lowering of her crest, hitherto held so high and carried so proudly, was the first move of her surrender. Her liberty was over, she was almost in the snare. The strong feminine principle in her impelled her like an inexorable fate toward marriage and the man. The children that were to be, urged her toward their creator. And the unconquered maidenhood that was still hers, recoiled with trembling reluctance from its demanded death. Love had not yet come to lead her into a new and wonderful world. She only felt the sense of strangeness and fear, of leaving the familiar ways to enter new ones that led through shadows to the unknown.
When she rode out beside her father in the red splendors of the morning, a new gravity marked her. Already the first suggestion of the woman—like the first breath of the season's change—was on her face. The humility of the great abdication was in her eyes.