There was a note of emotion in her laugh as she uttered the words. It did not escape the ear of the Young Doctor, who regarded her fixedly for a moment before he said: “I’m not sure that even He would be able to translate you. You speak your own language, and it’s surely original. I am only just learning its alphabet. No one else speaks it. I have a fear that you’ll be terribly lonely as you travel along the trail, Kitty Tynan.”
A light of pleasure came into Kitty’s eyes, though her face was a little drawn. “You really do think I’m original—that I’m myself and not like anybody else?” she asked him with a childlike eagerness.
“Almost more than any one I ever met,” answered the Young Doctor gently; for he saw that she had her own great troubles, and he also felt now fully what this comedy or tragedy inside the house meant to her. “But you’re terribly lonely—and that’s why: because you are the only one of your kind.”
“No, that’s why I’m not going to be lonely,” she said, nodding towards the corner of the house where John Sibley appeared.
Suddenly, with a gesture of confidence and almost of affection, she laid a hand on the Young Doctor’s breast. “I’ve left the trail, doctor-man. I’m cutting across the prairie. Perhaps I shall reach camp and perhaps I shan’t; but anyhow I’ll know that I met one good man on the way. And I also saw a resthouse that I’d like to have stayed at, but the blinds were drawn and the door was locked.”
There was a strange, eerie look in her face again as her eyes of soft umber dwelt on his for a moment; then she turned with a gay smile to John Sibley, who had seen her hand on the Young Doctor’s chest without dismay; for the joy of Kitty was that she hid nothing; and, anyhow, the Young Doctor had a place of his own; and also, anyhow, Kitty did what she pleased. Once when she had visited the Coast the Governor had talked to her with great gusto and friendliness; and she had even gone so far as to touch his arm while, chuckling at her whimsically, he listened to a story she told him of life at the rail-head. And the Governor had patted her fingers in quite a fatherly way—or not, as the mind of the observer saw it; while subsequently his secretary had written verses to her.
“So you’ve been gambling again—you’ve broken your promise to me,” she said reprovingly to Sibley, but with that wonderful, wistful laughter in her eyes.
Sibley looked at her in astonishment. “Who told you?” he asked. It had only happened the night before, and it didn’t seem possible she could know.
He was quite right. It wasn’t possible she could know, and she didn’t know. She only divined.
“I knew when you made the promise you couldn’t keep it; that’s why I forgive you now,” she added. “Knowing what I did about you, I oughtn’t to have let you make it.”