It was a moment or two before Agatha turned a wet, white face towards her, and saw gentle sympathy in her eyes. There was, she felt, no cause for reticence.
"No," she said, "it was the contrast between us. She has Gregory."
Mrs. Hastings made a sign of comprehension. "And you have lost Harry—but I think you have not lost him altogether. We do not know that he is dead—but even if it is so, it was all that was finest in him he offered you. It is yours still."
She broke off, and sat silent a moment or two before she went on again.
"My dear, it is, perhaps, cold comfort, and I am not sure that I can make what I feel quite clear. Still, Harry was only human, and it is almost inevitable that, had it all turned out differently, he would have said and done things that would have offended you. Now he has left you a purged and stainless memory—one I think which must come very near to the reality. The man who went up there—for an idea, a fantastic point of honour—sloughed off every taint of the baseness that hampers most of us in doing it. It was a man changed and uplifted above all petty things by a high chivalrous purpose, who made that last grim journey."
Agatha realised the truth of this. Already Wyllard's memory had become etherealised, and she treasured it as a very fine and precious thing. Still, though he now wore immortal laurels, that would not content her when all her human nature cried out for his bodily presence. She wanted him, as she had grown to love him, in the warm, erring flesh, and the vague, splendid vision was cold and far remote. There was a barrier greater than that of crashing ice and bitter water between them.
"Oh!" she said. "I have felt that. I try to feel it always—but just now it's not enough."
Then she turned her face away with a bitter sob, and Mrs. Hastings who stooped and kissed her went out quietly. She knew what had come about, and that the girl had broken down at last, after months of strain.
In the meanwhile, it happened that Edmonds, the mortgage broker, drove over to the Range, and found Hawtrey waiting him in Wyllard's room. It was early in the evening, and he could see the hired men busy outside tossing prairie hay from the waggons into the great barn. They were half-naked and grimed with dust, but Hawtrey, who was dressed in store clothes, had evidently taken no share in their labours. When Edmonds came in he turned to him with anxiety in his face.
"Well?" he said sharply.