Barbara was, though she did not show it, distinctly startled. She had never heard the man speak in that fashion, and his set face and vibrant voice were new to her. Indeed, she had now and then wondered whether he ever really let himself go. Still, she looked at him quietly, and, noticing the swollen veins on his forehead, and the glow in his eyes, decided it would not be advisable to admit that she attached much importance to what he had said. He was, she fancied, fit for any rashness just then.
"I suppose we, all of us, have moods of self-depreciation occasionally," she said. "Still, one would not have fancied that you were unduly morbid, and one part of that little speech was a trifle inexplicable."
Brooke laughed curiously, but the girl noticed that one of his lean, hard hands was closed as he looked down on her.
"There are times when one has to be one's self, and civilities don't seem to count," he said. "I am glad that I am going away, because if I stayed here I should lose the last shred of my self-respect. As a matter of fact, I have very little left, but that little is valuable, if only because it was you who gave it me."
"Still, one would signally fail to see how you could lose it here."
Brooke stood still, looking at her with signs of struggle, and, she could almost fancy, passion, in his set face; and then made a little gesture, which seemed to imply that he had borne enough.
"You will probably understand it all by and by," he said. "I can only ask you not to think too hardly of me when that happens."
Then, as one making a strenuous effort, he turned abruptly away, and Barbara, who let him go, went back to the room where her sister sat, very thoughtfully.
Brooke in the meanwhile swung savagely along the trail, beneath the shadowy pines, for he recognized, with a painful distinctness, that Barbara Heathcote's view of his conduct was by no means likely to coincide with Devine's, and he could picture her disgust and anger when the revelation came, while it was only now, when he would in all probability never meet her on the same terms again, he realized the intensity of his longing for the girl. He had also, he felt, succeeded in making himself ridiculous by a display of sentimentality that must have been incomprehensible to her, and though that appeared of no great importance relatively, it naturally did not tend to console him. When he reached his tent Jimmy stared at him.
"I guess you look kind of raised," he said. "Where's your hat?"