“Do you really believe we will, in your heart, Mr. Pitt?”
“Most emphatically I do.”
“How?”
“I don’t know.”
“Then you only hope——?”
“No; I believe.”
“Oh!” she cried suddenly. “I hope—I pray—that you’re right; because it’s all my fault, all my fault, and I’d never forgive myself if I’d brought harm to you—or George.”
Once more the sound of George’s name on her tongue shocked me. Could she never get the man out of her head?
I picked aimlessly at a birch bough over my head, and each little budding leaf that I plucked away seemed like the tiny dreams which unconsciously had been in my mind all morning, and which now were driven away. The dreams that come to a man willy-nilly, without reason, without basis of hope. It probably was the stress of yesterday, the natural romance of a cave in the wilderness that were responsible. Well, I had that, anyhow; hours with Betty, in the sunlit, primitive woods. The memory of that would remain. Why, I was rich, richer than I had ever been in my life.
“Will you allow me to say something serious, Betty?”