“I will always hate this mountain-top,” he said. “I used to love it. I was so close to happiness, and now you’ve snatched it out of my reach.” He drew in sobbing breaths.
“No—it’s myself I’m keeping from happiness, not you,” she answered. “I know it will come right, but you must not hurry me. Dear Hugh, be patient.” She found his hand and raised it, a dead weight, to her lips. “Please be patient. Let’s go down out of this wind. I can’t see your world, and I’m cold.”
So, in silence—a dull gray silence Hugh led her down into the valley.
CHAPTER IX
They came down the hill rapidly and carelessly. Hugh, stung by pain and anger, threw himself over the rocks, and Sylvie was too proud to show her timidity or to ask for help. She crept and climbed up and down, saving herself with groping hand, letting one foot test the distances before she put the other down. At last the rattle of his progress sounded so far below that she quavered: “Aren’t you going to wait for me, Hugh?”
He stopped short, and for a moment watched her silently; then, smitten by the pathos of her progress—a little child, she seemed, against the mountain toppling so close behind her—he came swinging up to her and gave her his hand.
“You need me, anyway, don’t you?” he asked with a tender sort of roughness.
She couldn’t answer because she didn’t want him to know that he had made her cry. She kept her face turned from him and hurried along at his side.
“Why do you go so fearfully fast?” she was forced at last to protest.