One by one her boxes were thrown into the banca, paddled ashore, and carried to the door of the big building, the convento of the friars before the revolution had driven them out. Then very ceremoniously, while the padron warned about further delay, Saunders handed her into the little canoe, like a princess into her gondola, out again on shore, and helped her over the first and worst part of the causeway.
"I must go now," he said. "Wilson is waiting for you at the door and that launch is beginning to thump bottom. And please, once more; won't you come back to Bacolod?"
She lifted her clear eyes to him and shook her head gently. "But you are a dear good boy," she said.
To the subtle maternal tone of this, there was no replying. He bowed low over her hand and turned back.
She started up right away. A great loneliness exhaled itself from the land. She did not look behind, but toiled stolidly toward the building.
Tied to one of the verandah posts, a native pony, short-necked, compact, muscular, was pawing the ground. She stopped and looked at it, gaining from it the first comfort received of things since her arrival. It was carefully groomed. The bay flanks shone like silk; the mane, parted, fell fluffily on each side of the curved neck, the forelock dangling roguishly between the eyes. Beneath the polished saddle a red blanket added a touch of colour, almost of coquetry. The little animal stood there like a protest against the ambient discouragement.
But a white-garbed man was at the door. "Good-morning, Mr. Wilson," she said gaily; "what a nice horse you have there!"
"Good-morning, Miss Terrill," he answered, a gleam of approval in his pale, tired eyes; "but that's not my horse. Mine—well, it's like everything else about here"—and in a heavy gesture he passed his hand over the musty landscape.
She met the owner upstairs.
He was a young man with slender waist and broad shoulders. Leather-gaitered, buttoned to the chin in khaki, a big Colt hanging to his loose belt, he gave Miss Terrill an impression of elastic efficiency very pleasing. But still more pleasing, she thought very secretly, were his eyes, golden-brown, soft and rather grave. He was horribly reticent though. He let Wilson do the talking; leaning against the window-sill, he contented himself with short remarks dropped at long intervals like the sudden toning of a deep bell, and also with a consideration of her, serious and thorough like the pondering of a problem. It was something entirely different from that to which she was accustomed. She was not vain; but still, she had often seen herself, mirrored, as it were, in the eyes of men; and she knew that in her short khaki skirt, her long, tawny leggins, her wide-collared blouse, her soft felt hat beneath which her hair fluffed, light and golden as sun-kissed vapour, she was—well, picturesque at least. But here was a judgment that reserved itself, an admiration very much under check. His very position as he stood there, his glances downward upon her, gave him a subtle strategic superiority. It was rather irritating; and when he bowed and excused himself out of the room, her return salute was stiff with a stiffness foreign to her sweet nature. But immediately she found herself listening intently, oblivious of Mr. Wilson, listening to the steps springing down the stairs, stamping upon the flagging of the court, stopping beneath the verandah. There was a short silence, then a sudden clatter of hoofs. Unconsciously she was up and at the window—and he was gliding rapidly along the palm-lined road leading away from the sea, erect in the saddle, his waist giving flexibly to the pace of the pony.