“You must have wondered why I did not write? But I—could not help it.” She glanced at her mother, who, with eloquent hands, was telegraphing him welcome from the other end of the car. “I will tell you later—all.”
In his surprise and gladness his mind still clung to his resolve, and, nearly as possible, he kept his pact with himself. “I also have something to tell.”
She looked up quickly. But his eyes indicated no diminution of the old feeling. Satisfied, she asked, with a little sigh: “The mine? Something gone wrong? You will tell us—now.”
The señora, who had caught the last sentence, added her word. “Si, for we, you know, are your friends.” Making room for him by her side, she punctuated his tale of the summer’s mishaps with pitiful exclamations, and comforted him at the end with maternal solicitude. “Si, at the first glance I saw it, that you had suffered. But, courage, amigo, it will make for your greater enjoyment in the end.”
Francesca had taken the seat opposite, and, catching her eye just then, Seyd saw, along with the sympathy and understanding, a gleam of exultation. “You suffered, si, but I’m glad for—’twas for me.” Her glance said it plainly as words, and he ached to answer it; but, in accordance with the honest course he had laid out for himself, he refrained, and went on talking to her mother.
“Don Luis,” she answered his question, “is in the front car with Sebastien—in attendance on our dear friend, his mother.”
He knew that he had no part in their grief, and, tentatively, he began, “If I can be of any help—”
Divining his feeling from the pause, she answered at once: “You are very kind. Francesca, poor niña, has been under a great strain. ’Twill be a mercy if you will stay here and talk.”
Now that her first blushes had died, he could see it for himself. Her smile added the soft confession, “You did not suffer alone.”
Under her look Seyd felt his resolution weaken; to save it he looked out of the window, whereupon it gained strength from the thought of his impending confession. But it relaxed again the next time their glances met; and, as love is an anarchist who scoffs alike at law and death, their communications proceeded with alternate thawings and freezings, while, in reverse order, the black lava fields and gloomy piñon gave place to the painted hamlets, pink churches, and villages of huts in green seas of corn. Yet, if a little worse for wear, his resolution held. Indeed, it found definite expression when the train stopped at last at their station.