She resumed her walk, and as he had nothing to say in answer to her speech, he looked across the stretch of water at the twinkling lights of Thursday. He had received a well-merited snub, he told himself—one he would not be likely to forget for a few days to come. He had presumed too much on her kindness of the afternoon. Who was he that he might expect from her anything more than ordinary civility? He was her father's servant, paid by the week to do odd jobs about the place; a position only found for him out of charity by a kind-hearted girl. With a gesture of anger he went briskly across the sands, plunged into the thicket, and strode back towards the house. He was not of course to know that after leaving him she had stopped in her walk and watched him until he disappeared. When she, in her turn, wended her way homeward, it was, illogically enough, with an equally heavy heart. She did not, perhaps, regret her action, but her mind was torn with doubts.
"If only I could be certain," she kept repeating to herself. "If only I could be certain!"
But that didn't mend matters very much. That she had angered him, at least, was certain. Then came the question which was destined to keep her awake half the night. Had she played with him too much? She could see that he was thoroughly angered.
On arriving at the hut Ellison discovered Murkard in the act of going to bed. He was seated on his couch, one boot on, the other in his hand. He looked up as his friend entered, and one glance at his face told him all he wanted to know. Placing the boot he held in his hand carefully on the floor, he removed the other and arranged it beside its fellow. Then, addressing himself to the ceiling cloth, he said:
"I have often noticed that when a man imagines himself happiest he is in reality most miserable, and vice versa. Last night my friend was supremely happy,—don't ask me how I knew I saw it,—and yet he sighed in his sleep half the night. This evening he would have me believe that he is miserable, and yet there's a look in his eyes that tells me at the bottom he is really happy."
"You're quite out of your reckoning, my friend, as far as to-night is concerned. I am miserable, miserable in heart and soul, and for two pins I'd leave the place to-morrow."
"I should."
"The devil! and why?"
"Because you're going deliberately to work to make an ass of yourself, if you want it in plain, unvarnished English. You're falling head over ears in love with a woman you've only known a month, and what's the result to be?"
"What do you think?"