The words trailed off softly and left the statement hanging interrogatively in midair.
Denny nodded his head in the direction of John Anderson’s house that had been.
“About that?” he asked.
She nodded her head. And then she told him; she began at the very beginning and told him everything from that night when she had watched him there under cover of the thicket. Once she tried to laugh when she related Old Jerry’s panic, a week or two later, when he had come to find her packing in preparation to leave. But her mirth was waveringly unsteady. And when she tried to explain, too, how she had chanced to buy up the mortgage on his own bleak house on the hill, her voice again became suddenly, diffidently small.
There was a new, sweet confusion in her refusal to meet his eyes and Denny, reaching out with his bandaged hand, half lifted her and swung her around until she needs must face him.
“You––you mean you––bought it, yourself?” he marvelled.
Then, face uplifted, brave-eyed, she went on a little breathlessly.
“I bought it, myself,” she said, “the week you went away.” And, in a muffled whisper: “Denny, I didn’t have faith––not much, at first. But I meant to be here when you did come, just––just because I thought you might need me––mighty badly. And waiting is hard, too, when one hasn’t faith. And I did wait! That was something, wasn’t it, Denny? Only––only now, today, I––I think I realized that my own need 307 of you is greater than yours could ever be for me!”
She sat, lips apart, quiet for his answer.