Appleby laughed. “I am, you will also remember, an adventurer, and the country that feeds me is, as they say in yours, quite good enough for me. A little to eat, a little sunshine, a comrade’s smile, and enough kindly earth to cover one at the last, is all, I believe, that one is entitled to expect.”
He had meant to answer lightly, but a curious little inflection crept into his voice against his will, and he sat still a moment while the memories crowded upon him, with a longing that would not be shaken off. Once more he seemed to be gazing down on the red beech woods and palely flashing river from the terrace at Northrop Hall, though he recognized that in the meanwhile Nettie Harding was watching him with a gleam of sympathetic comprehension in her eyes. It was significant that he did not feel impelled to speak, for they had arrived at a degree of intimacy which made silence admissible, and still were comrades, and nothing more.
“If you had said that with a purpose I wouldn’t have been in the least sorry for you,” she said. “It would have been cheap, but that’s just why I know you didn’t. Still, are you quite sure there is nothing you long for over there? I mean, of course, in England.”
Appleby was on the roof in Santa Marta in body, and noticed that Miss Harding made a very effective picture in her long white dress as she glanced at him with the little smile, but he was at the same time dually sensible of the crimson flush on the English beech woods and the meadows streaked with wisps of mist, while once more the alluring vision he had fought against glided into the scene. It was a girl with gray eyes and ruddy hair, graver, deeper of thought and emotion, and more imperious than Nettie Harding.
“Nothing that I am ever likely to get,” he said.
Nettie laughed, but there was a faint ring in her voice, and long afterwards Appleby remembered her words, which then appeared prophetic.
“Well,” she said, “do you know that if I could I would get it you, and there is very little an American girl can’t get when she sets her heart on it? Now that sounds bombastic, but I’m not sure that it is. Anyway, I’m going to England presently.”
Appleby looked up sharply. “To England!”
“Yes; you heard me. You will be sorry, but, of course, I’m coming back again.”
“I know I can tell you that I certainly shall without its appearing presumption,” said Appleby.