"Which woman?" asked Griff, who was still struggling with his faculties.
"The woman who calls herself his wife. The nurse sent across, soon after I came, to say that she was unmanageable, and Leo went with her. I expect him home every minute. I want him back, too, though I know he will be angrier than ever with me; he always is after these struggles. It costs him so much not to let her die at these times."
"Did Roddick allow you to stay here?"
This was another of Griff's childishly direct questions. He had got a little away from his own worries, and was growing responsive to the interest in his friend's situation. Somewhere, too deep down to be brought to the surface as yet, was a feeling that a certain plan, if he could once hit on it, would give all three of them relief.
"He had to. There could be no question of my returning across the moors, so he was going to sit up here all night, leaving his room to me. He had packed me off to bed a moment before the nurse came, but I listened at the head of the stairs and slipped down when he had gone, to see that everything was nice and warm for him on his return."
"Just as Kate used to do, just as Kate used to do for me," muttered Griff.
"But it will all have to be fought out again to-morrow," the girl went on. "And father will guess where I am and fetch me, when they find out in the morning that I have run away; and that will be the end of it, if Leo won't let me be strong, instead of just good in a worldly way."
She felt, somehow, that this shaggy, unkempt man was rather on the plane of the animals, to whom we talk freely of the things that lie nearest our hearts. She was already losing sight of the bitter personal grief that had brought him here.
Griff remembered that her father could never in this world come to fetch her; but that seemed a matter of lighter moment, and he waited to hear more from her. That fugitive idea was taking more definite shape in his brain.
"Do you think we ought to wait, year after year, till my hair is grey, and my face wrinkled, and I'm too unspeakably hideous to give him a moment's pleasure?" demanded the girl, after a reflective pause. She leaned forward eagerly for his answer.