The Elder had asked, "Why has she remained in Corinth?"
"Could it be—No, no! That would be too much. It was her interest in
Grace Conner alone that held her."
So Big Dan faced this thing against which the very strength of his manhood was his greatest weakness, and facing it he, too, was afraid to go into the garden—as he thought—to meet her. He must gain a little self-control first. He must grow better acquainted with this thing that had come upon him so quickly.
Following the instinct of his ancestors to face trouble in the open, he, too, set out, bound for a long tramp across the country. Perhaps he would go as far even as John Gardner's, and spend the night there. He went up the street for a block before turning north, lest his friends in the garden hail him. Then walking quickly he pushed on towards the outskirts of town, on the old Academy Hill road.
CHAPTER XXXIII.
HEARTS' TRAGEDIES
"So she sent him away to fight his battle alone, knowing it was the only way such a battle could be rightly fought."
When Miss Farwell, under the oak tree in the Academy yard, turned her eyes from the far blue roll of hills to see Dan Matthews coming through the gap in the tumble-down fence, it was as if he had appeared in answer to her thoughts, and the intensity of her emotions at the moment, frightened her.
Her first impulse was to escape. Then she sat still, watching him as if fascinated, while her trembling fingers picked at the young grass by her side. With his face turned toward the valley below, Dan came slowly across the weed-grown yard, unconscious of the presence of the young woman on the knoll. Then he looked in her direction. With her face turned quickly half-aside, she saw him stop suddenly as if halted by the same feeling that had so moved her.
For a full minute he stood there as if questioning his senses. The girl sat very still. Once she thought he would turn back—then he came on eagerly, as he had come that day from the water when he had looked up to see her on the river bank. And then he stood before her as he had stood that other day long weeks ago, with the sunlight on his red-brown hair.