“You mean live with me again as my wife?”
“Why not?”
Again her dark eyes were scanning his face and figure. Plimpton was gone, Ben Davison was dead, and the years were passing. Even Mary had deserted her. She had no money, and soon might not have even so much as a shelter to which she could turn. Mary’s desertion and loss of faith in her had been the heaviest blow of all. It uprooted violently a genuine affection.
Sibyl Dudley, in spite of a brave outward show, was beginning to feel the terrifying loneliness of isolation; the protection of even that broken arm of Curtis Clayton, which she had scorned in other days, would be a comfort now. She knew that he had never ceased to love her, and she might win and hold him again. That would at least forefend the terrors of poverty and loneliness which threatened her in the shadows of the gathering years.
Clayton did not reply to her question instantly. He looked off into space with dark eyes that were troubled. Sibyl, glancing at him, saw the stiff left arm swinging heavily, and thought of the flower in that cañon long ago and of the foolish girl who stood on the cañon wall and called to her devoted lover to get it for her. Afterward, that foolish girl had trampled in the dust even the beautiful flower of his perfect love. It began to seem that she would live to regret it, if she were not regretting it already. The mills of the gods are still turned by the river of Time, and they still grind exceeding fine.
“If I could but trust you!” he said, after a while, with a sigh.
They went on, past the granite wall of the cañon, and out upon the high mesa beyond. Behind them lay Paradise Valley, smiling in the sunshine of the warm afternoon. Before them was a dust of moving cattle. Harkness, having received his instructions from Justin, was bunching the mesa herd, with the assistance of cowboys, preparatory to cutting out the cattle that had been sold and driving them to the station for shipment.
“If I could but trust you!” Clayton repeated, when she made further protest. “Perfect love casteth out fear, but I haven’t that perfect love any longer.”
He turned on her an anguished face.
“Yet, even while I say that, I know that I have never stopped loving you a single minute in all these years. Such love should have had a better reward.”