Again she shook her head. "Didn't Mr. Danvers write you—?" Remembering that a letter would have crossed him on the Atlantic, she stopped.
"What's the matter? No one dead? Worse?" He laughed in her serious face when she had told. "Oh, well, that's not so bad. After all, Leslie was an awful chump. If a man isn't strong enough to hold a woman's love he shouldn't expect to keep her."
He was yet, of course, in ignorance of all that had transpired in his absence—the house-party and the complete revulsion it had wrought in Helen's feelings. He knew nothing of her shame, vivid remorse, passion of thankfulness for her escape. To him she was still the woman, desperate in her loneliness, who had challenged his love two short months ago. Withal, what possessed him to afford that glimpse of his old nature? It coupled him instantly in her mind with her late unpleasant experience.
Not understanding her silence, he ran gayly on: "I can now testify to the truth of the saying, 'Absence makes the heart grow fonder.' How is it with you? Have I lost or gained?"
Laughing nervously, she answered: "Neither. We are still the same good friends."
He shook his head, frowning. "Not enough. I want love—must, will have it."
Any lingering misapprehension of the state of her feelings which she may have entertained now instantly vanished. How she regretted the weakness which entitled him to speak thus! She knew now. Never, under any conditions, could she have married him, but, warned by dearly boughten experience, she dared not so inform him. Frightened, she fenced and parried, calling to her aid those shifts for men's fooling that centuries of helplessness have bred in woman's bone.
"Well, well!" she laughed. "I thought you more gallant. I on horseback, you in a buggy. Love at such long distance! I wouldn't have believed it of you!"
It was a bad lead, drawing him on instead of away. "That is easily remedied. Get in with me—or, I'll tie up to that poplar."
She checked his eagerness with a quick invention. "No, no! I was only joking. No, I say! There's a man, a river-driver, just behind that bluff." How she wished there were! Praying that some one might come and so afford her safe escape, she switched the conversation to his journey, and when that subject wore out enthused over the sunset. How beautiful was the sky—the shadows that fell like a pall over the bottoms—the lights slow crawling up the headlands!