“I love you?” she repeated softly, perversely. “Did you say ‘Hugh’ or ‘you,’ Pete?”
His face tightened; faint lines came about his mouth. “I said ‘Hugh!’”
“Ah—you love only him—nobody else in all the world?”
Her young and wistful voice came to him like a fragrance. He struggled as though his spirit were fighting in deep water. He tried to remember Hugh. He rose up slowly to meet this passionate moment, and now he made a short step toward the waiting girl. She was waiting, breathing fast. Pete’s arms quivered at his sides.
A hand gripped the quivering muscles and turned him about. Hugh had come up behind, without sound, on moccasined feet. His face was gray; his eyes were drawn into slits; his distorted mouth was trying to become a straight, hard line. The effort gave a twitch to the pale, lower lip.
Sylvie stood up, singing as though in absent-minded idleness, and vanished into the house. It would have been difficult to tell whether or not she had heard Hugh’s arrival.
“What’s the matter?” Pete stammered like a boy wakened from a dream to behold a lifted cane. “Let go my arm, Hugh. Your fingers cut.”
“Come away from the house,” said Hugh coldly, tightening the iron grip as though Pete’s wincing gave him satisfaction. “Come up here by the pines. I want to talk to you.”
“I’ll come,” said Pete. “Let go my arm.”
There was that in his voice that compelled obedience. Hugh’s hand fell and knotted into a fist. Pete walked beside him up the abrupt slope of their hollow to the little hill above the river. Its noise was loud in the still, sunny air. There was no wind stirring. It was high noon. A sloping tent of shadow drooped from the pines and made a dark circle about their roots. In this transparent, purplish tent the brothers faced each other. Pete’s lips were tremulous, and Hugh’s distorted.