“I want to thank you,” said she, “for what you have done.”
“I have done nothing,” he replied. “It is what I wish to do that I want you to think of. I do not know whether I shall ever be able to forgive myself—”
“No, no!” said she. “You must not talk—you must not allow yourself to feel in that way. It is unjust—to yourself and to—me—for you to feel so!”
I advanced to them, but she still stood looking into his face and holding his hand clasped in hers. There was something of appeal, of an effort to express more than the words said, in her look and attitude. He answered her regard by a gaze so pathetically wistful that she averted her face, pressed his hand, and turned to me.
“Good-night to you both, and thank you both, a thousand times!” said she.
“I wonder if old Shep’s relations and friends,” said Jim, as we stood under the arc light in front of my house, “ever came to forgive the people who took him away from his flocks and herds.”
“After what I’ve seen in the last few minutes,” said I, “I haven’t the least doubt of it.”
“Al,” said he, “these be troublous times, but if I believed all that what you say implies, I’d go home happy, if not jolly. And I almost believe you’re right.”
“Well,” said I, assuming for once the rôle of the mentor, “I think that you are foolish to worry about it. We have enough actual, well-defined, surveyed and platted grief on our hands, without any mooning about hunting for the speculative variety. Go home, sleep, and bring down a clear brain for to-morrow’s business.”