“I’m glad you didn’t,” he contrived to say.
“Now, don’t be foolish and unreasonable, Curtis. I know what you’ve thought, and all the horrid things that have been said about me since Ben Davison’s death, but they weren’t true. It isn’t any pleasanter for me to be lied about and misunderstood than it is for you and Justin. Mary’s mind has been poisoned against me, but I’ll make her see even yet that I’m not the woman she thinks I am.”
He sat looking at her in hesitation, the strange light which Justin had noticed again in his eyes; he hardly heard her words, but he could not fail to hear the music of her voice. It had not lost its charm.
“Good God, Sibyl,” he burst out, “if you could only have been true to me, and we could have lived happily together!”
There was agony and yearning in his tone.
“You have thought many foolish things, which you had no right to think, just like other people. Shall we ride along? There is a good path leading by those bushes.”
“Yes, the trail past the Black Cañon.”
The fence hedging the mesa from the valley had been lately removed. He turned his horse toward the path, and they rode along together. At first he did not speak, but listened to her, with a glance at her now and then as she sat, firmly erect and beautiful, on that handsome bay. Her gray veil fluttered above her face. It was an attractive face, even a beautiful one, after all the years, and the strain and turmoil of them. There were a few fine hair-like wrinkles about the dark eyes, but she knew how to conceal them. The rouge which Lemuel Fogg had noticed in Denver was absent, or, having been deftly applied, was unnoticed by Clayton. Her blue close-fitting riding habit, with a dash of bright color at the throat, became her and heightened her charm. And it was her beauty, unchanged, it seemed to him, which Clayton devoured when he glanced at her; it was her beauty which had won his boyish heart, and it had not lost its power.
“Good God, Sibyl, if you could only have been true to me!” he exclaimed again.
She showed no irritation.