"Yourself." His weary, hopeless tone brought her tears. "In love there is no shame, an' you was ashamed of me."
"I did mean to tell you." Desperate, she caught his neck. How valuable this love was becoming, now she felt it slipping from her! "I did! But you went away without saying good-bye."
"There was opportunity, plenty. You could have sent for me."
His sternness set her trembling. "Then—I thought—I thought—they were only to be here for one day. Such a short visit. I thought they might misjudge—I didn't want to expose you to hostile criticism."
"You've said it. Love knows no fear. Good-night."
"Oh!—please—don't!" she called after him, as he strode away. Pity, woman's weakness, the conservative instinct that makes against broken ties, these were all behind her cry, and his keen sensibility instantly detected them. He closed the stable door.
According to the canons of romance, it would have been very proper for that jarring echo to have unstoppered the fountains of her love and all things would have come to a proper ending. But, somehow, it did not. After a burst of crying into her lonely pillow, she lay and permitted her mind to hark back over her married life. Hardship, squalor, suffering, misfortune passed in review till she gained back to the days when Molyneux had also paid her court. What share had anger and pique in affecting her decision? Angry pride was, just then, ready to yield them the larger proportion. Later came softer memories. She was troubled as she thought of his generous kindness. Under the thought affection, if not love, revived, and conscience permitted no sleep until she promised to beg forgiveness.
However, circumstance robbed her of the opportunity. Before the Ravells retired, Carter had said good-bye, as he intended to start back for the woods before sunrise. "You needn't to get up, either," he had told her. "I'll take breakfast with Bender." But now she promised herself that she would rise, get him a hot meal, and then make her peace. But at dawn she was awakened by his wheels, and, running to the door, she was just in time to see him go by. She would have called only, as the cry trembled to her lips, his words of the night before recurred to memory—"Marriage without love is shame!" Suddenly conscious of her night-gear, she shrank as a young girl would from the eye of a stranger, and the chance was gone.
"I'll tell him when he returns," she murmured, blushing.
But he did not return; and two days later Bender and Jenny Hines drove up to the door.