Neither spoke again, till the buggy, cresting the last rise, came out on the shoulder of the mountain, whence the road loops downward through the sage to Washoe Lake. Below them, at the base of the Sierra, the lake lay, a sheet of pure blue, its banks shading from the gray of the surroundings to a vivid green where the water moistened them. There was something human in this evidence of the land’s readiness to bloom and beautify itself when the means were given it. It was a touch of coquetry in this austere, unsmiling landscape that seemed so indifferent.
Silent, the man and woman looked down, neither thinking of what they saw. The spirited horse was now willing to rest for a space, and stood, an equine statue against the sky, eagerly sniffing the keen air, his head motionless in a trance of alert attention, his ears pricking back and forth. A gulf of silence encircled them, pin-points of life in an elemental world.
June sat with relaxed muscles, her hands in her lap, her eyes on the lake. The stormy, troubled joy, so far from happiness, that was hers when with Jerry, held her. She had no desire to speak or move. The consciousness of his presence was like a drug to her energies, her reason, and her conscience. Sitting beside him, in this sun-steeped, serene solitude, the sense of wrong in his companionship became less and less acute, the wall of reserve between them seemed to evaporate. Sin and virtue, honor and dishonor, seemed the feeble inventions of timid man, oppressed and overwhelmed by this primordial nature which only sympathized with a pagan return to itself.
From an absent contemplation of the landscape Jerry turned and looked at his companion. He surveyed her with tender scrutiny, noting points in her appearance he had loved—the slight point with which her upper lip, just in the middle, drooped on her under one, the depression of her dimple, the fineness of her skin.
“No one else in the world has got the same sort of face as you,” he said at length.
“That’s not to be regretted,” she murmured foolishly.
“You’ve the dearest little mouth, the way your upper lip comes down in a point on your lower one! I don’t believe there’s another woman in the world with such a queer little fascinating mouth.”
He continued to gaze at her, half-smiling, but with intent eyes. Both felt the desire to talk leaving them. The silence of the landscape seemed to take possession of them, to make speech seem trivial and unnecessary.
“Why did you refuse Rion Gracey?” he said suddenly in a lowered voice.
She did not reply and he repeated the question.