Muriel changed the subject.
“For all that, I feel you are right in staying, Cyril. Have you written to your people?”
Prescott felt embarrassed and guilty, as he generally did when, in confidential moments, she called him by Jernyngham’s name. Somehow he could not imagine her saying Jack.
“No,” he rejoined slowly. “Of course, they must be written to.”
Muriel did not answer. The turn their conversation had taken had filled her with a vague unrest as she looked back at the life she had led. Three or four years ago it had seemed filled with glamour and excitement, and she had entered on its pleasures with eager zest, but of late she had begun to find them wearisome. They no longer satisfied her. If this were the result of a few years’ experience, what would she feel when she had grown jaded with time and everything was stale? Then her glimpse of the simple, healthful western life had come as a revelation. It was real, a bracing struggle, in which no effort was wasted but produced tangible results: broad stretches of splendid wheat, sweeps of azure flax.
But this was not all. She felt drawn to her brown-faced companion, who had obviously redeemed whatever errors he had been guilty of in the past. She had known him for only about a fortnight, but she had seen his admiration for her with a satisfaction that was slightly tempered by misgivings. She could not tell exactly what she expected from him, but she had at least looked for some expression of a wish that their acquaintance should not end abruptly on the morrow. She did not think she would have resented a carefully modified display of the gallantry Cyril Jernyngham must be capable of, if reports were true. Considering what his past was supposed to have been, the grave man who watched her with troubled eyes was hard to understand.
“Cyril,” she asked, “has Harry given you our address at Glacier and Banff?”
He supposed that this implied permission to write to her, but he could not do so as Jack Prescott and he already bitterly regretted that he had allowed her to think of him as Jernyngham.
“Yes,” he said, with a carelessness which cost him an effort. “But I’m afraid I’m not a good correspondent. I’m too busy, for one thing.”
“Too busy?” she mocked, with a stronger color in her face. “Can’t you spare half an hour from your plowing to write to your friends?”