She had thrown over her a loose cloak, and a bit of soft, clinging lace showed between its dark edges. Her brilliant hair was loosely gathered in a single braid, and in the moonlight it shone like beaten copper against the vivid pallor of her face. He sat stirless, smitten with confusion, conscious that a movement must betray him. A painful embarrassment enveloped him, a fastidious sense of shrinking from her sight of him. He felt a dull wave of resentment that an antic irony of circumstance should have brought them beneath the same roof—to make him seem the moody pursuer, the unwelcome trespasser on her reserve—and that now thrust him into a position which at any hazard he would have shunned. But all thought of himself, all feeling save one vanished, when, with sudden piteous abandon, she threw herself on her knees by the bench and broke into slow sobs, shuddering and tearless.
In that outbreak of emotion, were not alone the pent-up pain and humiliation she had suffered, or the desperate joy of that evening's knowledge. There were in it, too, grief and compunction, dismay and doubt of the future. She was engaged to Austen Ware. Would Daunt ever forgive? Would he want her—now? In the first realization of her error, wound with the knowledge that he was so near her, she had felt only joy; but in the silence of her room, shock on shock had come the incredulous question, the burning revulsion. A while she had lain wide-eyed, but at length, sleepless, she had stolen out to the balmy, fragrant night, craving its peace, longing passionately for its soft shadows and the hovering touch of the mountain's breath on her hair. And in its friendly shadows the gust of feeling had swept her from her feet.
The action took Daunt wholly by surprise. The sound tore his heart like a ruthless talon, and drew a hoarse word from his lips:
"Barbara!" It was little more than a whisper, but she sprang erect with a gasp, her breath labored and terror-stricken.
"I—I beg pardon," he said, with a dry catch in his throat. "Don't be frightened. I will go at once. I should not have stayed. But you came so suddenly, and I did not dream—I—"
"How strange that you should have been here!" She thought he must hear the loud drumming of her pulse.
He laughed—a hard, colorless little laugh. "Yes," he answered, "it seems so."
A mist blinded her eyes, for his tone carried to her, even more sharply than had the look she had seen from the balcony, a sense of the pain he had undergone. In what words could she tell him?
"You have been suffering," she said in a low voice. "I see that. And it was my fault."
He gathered himself together with an effort of will, to still the tingle that flashed along his nerves. "It was quite sane and right, no doubt," he said. "When I have learned to be honest enough with myself, I shall see it so. My mistake was in ever dreaming that I was worth one of your thoughts or a single second's memory."