When the coffee came on Bertha rose abruptly, saying, "Come out into the garden, Mart, I've got something to say to you."
He obeyed with a sense of being called to account, and as they walked slowly across the grass, which the light of a vivid orange sunset had made transcendently green, he glanced to the west with foreboding that this was the last time he should look upon the kingly peak at sunset time. A flaming helmet of cloud shone upon the chief, and all the lesser heights were a deep, purple bank out of which each serrate summit rose without perspective, sharply set against the other like a monstrous silhouette of cardboard.
It should have been indeed a very sweet and odorous and peaceful hour. The murmur of the water from the fountain had the lulling sound of a hive of bees as they settle to rest, and to the suffering man it seemed impossible that this, his cherished world, could change to the black chaos which the loss of his adorable wife would bring upon it.
The settee was of wire, and curved so that when they had taken seats they faced each other, and the sight of her, so slender, so graceful, so womanly, filled him with a fury of hate against the assassin who had torn him to pieces, making him old before his time, a cripple, impotent, inert, and scarred.
Bertha did not wait for him to begin, and her first words smote like bullets. "Mart, I'm going back to Sibley."
He looked at her with startled eyes—his brow wrinkling into sorrowful lines. "For how long?"
"I don't know—it may be a good while. I'm going away to think things over." Then she added, firmly, "I may not come back at all, Mart."
"For God's sake, don't say that, girlie! You don't mean that!" His voice was husky with the agony that filled his throat. "I can't live without ye now. Don't go—that way."
"I've got to go, Mart. My mind ain't made up to this proposition. I don't know about living with you any more."
"Why not? What's the matter, darlin'? Can't ye put up with me a little longer? I know I'm only a piece of a man—but tell me the truth. Can't you stay with me—as we are?"