“You are so—so dumb, David,” she said impatiently.
“Ay, I was never one to talk much, Cilla. I’m one to feel, for all that. Time and time I fancy I’m a bit like Billy the Fool—loving the dust o’ Garth Street when you walk along it, because ’tis you that passes by, yet never finding a word to put to ’t.”
Cilla’s strength was nearly spent. The heat of the pitiless summer, her loneliness since Gaunt had chosen otherwise, the constant peril of the Black Fever brooding round about Garth Village, had sapped her courage. For a moment she was tempted to yield to David’s entreaties. He was so sure of himself, so clean of his heart and his hands. She liked and needed him.
She remembered Gaunt, recalled each trivial detail of the day when she had gone by coach to Keta’s Well, wearing a maiden heart. She thought of the homeward walk, of the throstle-calls and the keen, young vigour of the spring, while Gaunt stepped beside her, and talked and took her unawares. She shrank in fancy from the kiss that he had given her at the gate.
“No, David, no!” she said. Her eyes were wet, but she did not fear to look him in the face. “I’m not proud of Reuben Gaunt—not proud of him at all—but I’m glad o’ the love I gave him—though—though it died, David.”
David the Smith took a long glance at the room—at the plants in the window-sill, at the settle which had found him on many a bygone night passing slow talk and quiet pipe-reek with Yeoman Hirst across the hearth. Then he looked at Cilla, and stood there—strong and good to see, and diffident—and his air was that of a man who steps into a church. It had always been his way when Cilla was in sight.
“Why, then, good-by, lile Cilla,” he said abruptly. “There’s much to be done, if I’m setting off by Tuesday.”
“David! David, you must not go like this—thinking me unfriendly. David, I could never bear to be unfriendly to you.”
She had moved to his side, and in perplexity had laid both hands upon his arm.
“You’ll not understand,” she went on hurriedly. “I shall miss you from Garth. I shall look for you three times a day. The homeland will be emptier, David.”