The train was nearer now; he could hear its low rumbling hum, rising to a roar, and the click and spring of the rails. But though he lifted a foot from the stirrup, he did not dismount. Something in the whirlwind speed of that coming caught and held him motionless. He had a sudden curious feeling that all the world beside did not exist; there were only the sweeping rush of the nearing train—impersonal, unhuman—he, sitting his horse in the gloom, and that unknown rider whose anguish of speed outstripped the steam, riding—to whom?
The road skirted the track as it neared the station, and all at once a white glare from the opened fire-box flung itself blindingly across the dark, illuminating like a flare of summer lightning the patch of highway and the rider. Valiant, staring, had an instant’s vision of a streaming cloak, of a girl’s face, set in a tawny swirl of loosened hair. With a cry that was lost in the shriek of escaping steam, he dragged his plunging horse around and the white blaze swept him also, as the rider pulled down at his side.
“You!” he cried. He leaned and caught the slim hands gripped on the bridle, shaking now. “You!”
The dazzling brightness had gone by, and the air was full of the groaning of the brakes as the long line of darkened sleepers shuddered to its enforced stop. “John!”—He heard the sweet wild cry pierce through the jumble of noises, and something in it set his blood running molten through his veins. It held an agony of relief, of shame and of appeal. “John ... John!”
And knowing suddenly, though not how or why, that all barriers were swept away, his arms went out and around her, and in the shadow of the lonely little station, they two, in their saddles, clung and swayed together with clasping hands and broken words, while the train, breathing heavily for a resentful second, shrieked itself away into the night, and left only the fragrance from the misty fields, the crowding silence and the sprinkling stars.
The breeze had risen and was blowing the mist away as they went back along the road. A faint light was lifting, forerunner of the moon. They rode side by side, and to the slow gait of the horses, touching noses in low whinnyings of equine comradeship, by the faint glamour they gazed into each other’s faces. The adorable tweedy roughness of his shoulder thrilled her cheek.
“... And you were going away. Yes, yes, I know. It was my fault. I ... misunderstood. Forgive me!”
He kissed her hand. “As if there were anything to forgive! Do you remember in the woods, sweetheart, the day it rained? What a brute I was—to fight so! And all the time I wanted to take you in my arms like a little hurt child....”
She turned toward him. “Oh, I wanted you to fight! Even though it was no use. I had given up, but your strength comforted me. To have you surrender, too—”