"That's the very thing which perplexes me," she confessed. "I was going to ask you about that. For it was hurt pride that sent him away and he hasn't forgotten the hurt, even yet. He was going to tell us, last night when I stopped him, that he hadn't written again because he wasn't certain that we wanted to hear; and he was painfully conscious of how childish it would sound in words, too. Some men quit when they are whipped once, but don't some of them refuse to recognize that they've ever been whipped at all, Cal? And then, she told me that she had asked him to her party, Friday night. If he comes I think I'll be better able to tell just what——"
"He won't!" cut in Caleb flatly, and when she taxed him for it he proceeded to elaborate at considerable length the reason for his certainty. His argument was rather tight and so, just because of that, woman-fashion she believed the contrary.
All day Friday she watched the hills' road. Not until the orchestra in the lodge beyond the hedge had begun tunelessly to strum their instruments, to insure their later tunefulness, did she reluctantly abandon her position at the window. But then, from his chair at the fire, Caleb noticed how wistfully disappointed her face was.
It turned much colder with nightfall; a wind sharp with the tang of autumn was blowing in off the river when Barbara, muffled from throat to ankle in a sapphire fur-edged wrap, slipped in at the door, having stolen away ostensibly to display to them her costume. It was after the hour of ten, but the girl lingered a little after she had executed that mission; she stopped again in the door, indecisively worrying her lip with small teeth, when she finally turned to depart.
"We are very sorry that Mr. O'Mara could not come," she hesitated. "I had promised both Garry and Archie Wickersham that he would be down."
The older woman nodded and accepted the statement for what it was—a question which the girl's eyes failed to conceal.
"We haven't heard from him since he went back into camp," she answered. "He, no doubt, has been unable to get away."
Barbara turned without replying and passed out, less airily than she had entered. But Miss Sarah's eyes were no longer disappointed as she again took her place at a window. And a second later, when she had drawn back suddenly into the room with a muffled exclamation, her brother was astonished at her beaming face. A moment earlier he would have sworn that it was only wistful, but before she went upstairs, exclaiming still further at the lateness of the hour, it began to look more than a little like veritable triumph to him.
Barbara Allison recrossed the lawn very slowly that night; she retraced her steps with head bent, the fall of her slippered feet muffled by the carpet of thick, unfrosted grass. Vaguely troubled, vaguely disturbed at herself for her inability to analyze that strange mood which, twice in the last few nights, had sent her with aching throat and wet cheeks into Miriam's room, she was within arm's length of the dark figure in the hedge gap through which she had just come, before she was aware of its presence. Stephen O'Mara, weatherbeaten hat in hand, was standing there in her path, peering steadily at the stucco and timber lodge alight from end to end like a huge and sprawling glow-worm.
Even in that first moment when she stopped and caught her breath, audibly, from sheer surprise, the girl sensed the indecision in the attitude of the man before her. But she could not know that it was not a thing of the moment—that irresolution; could not know that throughout the week Steve had periodically abused himself for his inability to settle the question once and for all, and leave his brain free for more important things. Just as often as he told himself that he would not go, he had found himself reopening the mental discussion, and yet—and strangely enough—it was not the recollection of Barbara's repeated invitations, or even her distress over Garry Devereau, who had been ceaselessly in his thoughts ever since she had spoken of him, which finally achieved the decision. An insistent desire again to meet the Honorable Archibald Wickersham in the end led him to request Fat Joe to hook up the team, that day at noon, for the long drive down river. With Steve himself handling the reins, they had rolled the thirty miles at a speed which might have mildly surprised Fat Joe had he not been accustomed to putting two and two together to make six or eight or more. And Fat Joe's thin tenor was just drifting faintly off down the hill—a mournful rendition of "Home, Sweet Home"—when the girl stepped noiselessly forward and put a hand, feather-light, upon the man's arm.