"Yes," she said, "and it's my heart that's dead with him."
"I didn't know you felt like that—about him, Deirdre," Conal said, a humble, awkward air about him.
That it was Davey lay there dead did not seem to trouble him. It was of Deirdre he was thinking in a mazed, dazed way, and the thing she had said to him.
"You've done what no woman could forgive you, Conal." A vibrating passion had come to her voice. "I never want to see you again as long as I live."
Conal stared at her a moment; then he swung heavily out of the hut into the yard. He had the gait of a drunken man. She heard him stumble over something in the yard, strike his head against a post. Then the sound of his horse's hoof-beats in the clearing died away.
Deirdre looked down at the still figure beside her. In spite of what she had said she could not believe that Davey was dead—that all that young, strong body would not move again, that Davey's eyes would not open and look at her with the eager, questioning glance she had known. Something of the horror of his stillness had passed; she moistened his lips with the spirit. Putting her arms round him she gathered him up against her, put his head on her bosom and leaned over him, crooning softly, as though he were asleep. She beguiled herself by saying that he was only asleep and would waken presently.
"What a long time it is," she murmured. "Do you remember, Davey dear, the night before father and I went away, and I ran over the paddock to the corner of the road to see you? I was angry you had gone away without wanting to see me, yourself.... You kissed me and I kissed you, and I promised to come back and be your sweetheart and we'd be married some day.... And the birds laughed. And the red-runners were out by the road. There was a beautiful sunset, and it got dark soon. You said it was me you loved and not Jessie. Then I went away ... and it has never been the same since. But it will be ... when you are well and I can tell you how much I want you to love me again—"
She laughed softly.
"Do you remember how we used to go home in the cart from school together, and how we used to trot Lass up the hillsides to make her poor old sides go like bellows, and you showed me how to blow birds' eggs, and Jess said I wasn't a little lady to blow birds' eggs."
Her voice ran on with a brooklike tenderness.