Pen leaned against the fence post. A welter of emotions seemed to shatter her; joy, incredulity, terror that her wits might be wandering, anger at his careless air of well-being.
Bye and bye she put up the bars mechanically, and started to walk along the road with a dazed air. She could not take in what had happened. Dusk was falling. In a couple of hundred yards a figure stepped out from the shadow of the bordering growth.
"Pen!" it whispered.
Her first reaction was to a shaking anger. She was a little beside herself. Stamping her foot in the road she cried in a soft, strained voice: "You Don! Cutting up like a school-boy in the road! Is that all you have on your mind!"
He fell back a step in surprise. Then he laughed softly like the boy she accused him of being. "But Pen ... aren't you glad?"
"Yes, laugh! do!" she said bitterly. "It's nothing to you what I've been through these last three days and nights!"
"I told you not to worry," he said sheepishly.
"Told me not to worry! What do you think I am?"
"There was no way in which I could let you hear from me. I thought you'd understand everything was all right."
"You didn't care! You didn't care!"