He had released her hand. They looked at one another a long time. She smiled a little.
"I must go back."
She touched his sleeve lightly, mounted and looked down at him.
"Can't I help in any way?" he asked.
"No one can help me," she whispered. "No one but my own weak self."
And the look upon her countenance which had appalled him as she passed through the gate was coming back as she rode away.
XXIII
A soft, misty pall of midsummer heat hung over and pervaded the vine-covered forest of wild-apple trees surrounding Garman's house when Payne set out on Sunday afternoon to keep his appointment. As he entered the footpath leading from the prairie toward the house, he was forced to stoop to avoid the curtain of flowering moonvine which hung overhead, and once in the path he felt again the sickening drowsiness of the shut-in air. A mingling of many sweet odors hung about him like a heavy, poisonous drug; and he felt that it was pleasant poison, and walked swiftly on.
In a shaded pergola running out from the house to the jungle he saw
Annette, and stopped.
An old man with a white Vandyke beard and pompously out-thrown chest was coming down the path from the house. He strutted as he walked, and stood for a moment framed between two palm trees where the path entered the pergola.