It might have been because he had so much to write about.
It might have been because a strange little feeling of compunction bothered him.
But Harlan did not have the courage to examine his sentiments too closely. Only, after he had sealed the letter and inscribed it, he lay back in his chair awhile, and then, having reflected that after three weeks he would no longer be his own man, he decided that he'd better run up to Fort Canibas and attend to his business interests.
And he departed hastily the next morning, in spite of the Duke's puzzled and rather indignant protests that business wasn't suffering beyond what the telephone and mails could cure, and that he himself would go home the next week and see to everything.
There are some men who are strong enough to run away from weakness. Not that Harlan Thornton admitted that he was weak in the presence of Madeleine Presson. But he felt a sudden hunger for the big hills, the wide woods, the serene silences. He wanted to get his mental footing again. He had been swept off in a flood of new experiences. Just now he found himself in a state of mind that he did not understand.
"I'll go back and let the old woods talk to me," he whispered to himself.
Then he tore up the letter he had written to Clare Kavanagh.
It had occurred to him that he could tell it to her so much better.
So when he came to Fort Canibas in the evening of the second day he mounted his horse and rode across the big bridge.
He went before he had read the letters piled on the table in the gloomy old mess-hall. And he brusquely told the waiting Ben Kyle to save his business talk until the morning.