The splendid oak that had shaded their stile had grown broader of girth and more majestic in the spread of its head-growth since he had stood here before, and in the flower beds, in which Glory had delighted, a few forlorn survivors, sprung up as volunteers from neglected roots, struggled through a choke of dusty weeds.
The man looked about the empty yard and his breath came like that of a torture victim on the rack. The desolation and ache of a life deprived of all that 292 made it sweet struck in upon him with a blight beside which his prison loneliness had been nothing.
“If she knew the whole truth—instead of only half the truth,” he groaned, “she might forgive me.”
He ripped the padlock from the door and let himself in. He flung wide a shutter and let the afternoon sun flood the room, and once inside a score of little things worked the magic of memory upon him and tore afresh every wound that was festering.
There hung the landscapes that he and she had loved and as he looked at them her voice seemed to sound again in his ears like forgotten music. From somewhere came the heavy fragrance of honeysuckle and old nights with her in the moonlight rushed back upon him.
Then he saw an apron on a peg—hanging limp and empty, and again he saw her in it. He went and opened a drawer in which his own clothes had been kept—and there neatly folded by her hand were things of his.
John Spurrier, whose iron nerve had once been café talk in the Orient, sat down on a quilted bed and tearless sobs racked him.
“No,” he said to himself at last. “No, if she wants her freedom I can’t pursue her. I’ve hurt her enough—and God knows I’m punished enough.”
Unless he were tamely to surrender to the despair that beset him, John Spurrier had one other thing to do before he left the hills. He must come to such an agreement with Bud Hawkins as would give him a right of way over that single tract and complete his chain of holdings. Thus fortified the field beyond the ridge would be safe against invasion by his enemies 293 and even the other field would have readier outlet to market by that route. In the Hawkins property lay the keystone of the arch. With it the position was impregnable. Without it all the rest fell apart like an inarticulated skeleton.
It happened that Spurrier met Hawkins as he went away from his lonely house, and forcing his own miseries into the background, he sought to become the business man once more. He began with a frank statement of the facts and offered fair and substantial terms of trade.