She fell back a step. Her mouth trembled, her eyes filled with tears. Over and over again she had reasoned out Griff's faithlessness to her by woman's logic. His flight from London, his vulgar after-dissipation—or what had seemed such to her—his failure to come back to her side—they had all been twisted into proofs of his hopeless captivity under her yoke. It had been so easy to believe this, while away from him—and now, he showed hard and cold as an iceberg.
She tried to smile with her old winning artlessness.
"You are awfully rude, Griff, but perhaps I shall forgive you that; it is not a new rôle, this of the barbarian. Still, you might at least say you are glad to meet an old—friend. I haven't approved of you lately, you know, and you were horribly brusque before you left town, but——"
"I am always glad to meet an old friend. Do you mind if I smoke?" said Griff, refilling his pipe.
Sybil Ogilvie saw that the battle was to be to the strong, and she kept back her tears, though again they were very near the surface. Neither spoke for awhile. Griff was stinging under the lash of remembered follies. He saw, as if it had been written under his eyes, how this woman had fooled him in the past; he writhed as he looked at her, and understood what flimsy excuse he had had for raving about her. And now that he was out of reach, her passion had ceased to be a plaything; spoiled to the last, she only cared to have what was beyond her grasp. Her voice, her eyes, her hair, all irritated him beyond measure; chivalry was out of court, and he would not pity her.
"How did you get here?" he asked, in a hard, matter-of-fact voice.
"I walked up with Bertie Dereham to hunt for white heather. The mist came on; he went ever such a little distance away to find the track, and the fog swallowed him up. We shouted to each other, but 'here' sounded to be just anywhere, and I rushed about the moor till I nearly dropped with terror and weariness. Then I found you, and—I don't mind the mist, Griff, any longer."
"Your compliments were always pretty, Sybil. I used to believe them."
"When you were half a bear only, it didn't matter; but now I am getting awfully afraid lest you should eat me up." Yet her playfulness was dulled by the pitiful tremor in her voice.