She rejoiced in the warming air. She would take a long breath of it, and then the triumphant exit. She stepped a few paces forward to peer about a low-growing spruce that had shaded her. She had a last fancy for following the echo of her shot to the farther valley wall.
As she lifted the curtain boughs the sun dazzled her. She would see its golden points, she thought, when she shut her eyes in the thicket. She shut them quickly now, to prove this, and saw the myriad dancing lights.
As she opened her eyes again and turned to draw back into the wood there was imprinted curiously on her recovering vision a silhouette of the lake cabin. She shut them quickly again, dreading memories she was forever done with, and laughing in the certainty that the cabin was miles away. Then she looked again, blinking dazedly in the sunlight, and the cabin loomed before her across the clearing.
As she stared desperately, her mind roused to frantic denials, her eyes straining to banish this monstrous figment, the door of the cabin opened and Ewing came out. She sprang forward with an impulse to shatter the illusion by some quick movement. But her eyes still beheld him, bareheaded, turning his face up to the sun. He stretched his arms and drew deep breaths. He had never seemed so tall. His look had a kind of triumph in it.
She swayed under the shock of the thing, feeling herself grow faint. Cooney had betrayed her. Some time in the night, at one of those confusing bends in the trail, he had turned. He had brought her home.
Ewing's head had turned as she moved; his eyes were on her. She saw the rapt gladness in his face and beheld him approach her across the clearing. She managed another step or two and gained the support of a felled tree. As Ewing came up she essayed a little smile of nonchalance.
"Cooney—" she begun. The word came itself, but she felt easier under the sound of her own voice and went on—"Cooney came with me. I didn't go at all. I rode—but you see—" She beamed on him with explanatory embarrassment—"I took an early morning ride—it was so pleasant—and I thought I was lost—indeed I did, and I took off his saddle. I left it right there—" She pointed with the literal exactness of a child in its narrative of adventure—"right there behind that tree, and then I found I was—found I was closer to home than I thought."
He had not seemed to hear her, but stood looking narrowly, as if she were still far away. Gradually his eyes widened, as if he were drawing her close to him. He took a step toward her, with arms half raised.
"I'm so ashamed—" he muttered; "but you—you let me think that."
His voice brought her to sudden agonized alarm. The blood ebbed from her face and she almost staggered toward him.