Harboro’s face darkened. “I was the favorite lover,” he said.
“You won’t understand,” she said despairingly. And then as he arose and turned toward the door again she went to him abjectly, appealingly. “Harboro!” she cried, “I know I haven’t explained it right, but I want you to believe me! It is you I love, really; it is you I am grateful to and proud of. You’re everything to me that you’ve thought of being. I couldn’t live without you!” She sank to her knees and covered her eyes with one hand while with the other she reached out to him: “Harboro!” Her face was wet with tears, now; her body was shaken with sobs.
He looked down at her for an instant, his brows furrowed, his eyes filled with horror. He drew farther away, so that she could not touch him. “Great God!” he cried at last, and then she knew that he had gone, closing the door sharply after him.
She did not try to call him back. Some stoic quality in her stayed her. It would be useless to call him; it would only tear her own wounds wider open, it would distress him without moving him otherwise. It would alarm old Antonia.
If he willed to come back, he would come of his own accord. If he could reconcile the things she had done with any hope of future happiness he would come back to her again.
But she scarcely hoped for his return. She had always had a vague comprehension of those pragmatic qualities in his nature which placed him miles above her, or beneath her, or beyond her. She had drunk of the cup which had been offered her, and she must not rebel because a bitter sediment lay on her lips. She had always faintly realized that the hours she spent with Runyon might some day have to be paid for in loneliness and despair.
Yet now that Harboro was gone she stood at the closed door and stared at it as if it could never open again save to permit her to pass out upon ways of darkness. She leaned against it and laid her face against her arm and wept softly. And then she turned away and knelt by the chair he had occupied and hid her face in her hands.
She knew he would no longer be visible when she went to the window. She had spared herself the sight of him on his way out of her life. But now she took her place and began, with subconscious hope, the long vigil she was to keep. She stared out on the road over which he had passed. If he came back he would be visible from this place by the window.
Hours passed and her face became blank, as the desert became blank. The light seemed to die everywhere. The little home beacons abroad in the desert were blotted out one by one. Eagle Pass became a ghostly group of houses from which the last vestiges of life vanished. She became stiff and inert as she sat in her place with her eyes held dully on the road. Once she dozed lightly, to awaken with an intensified sense of tragedy. Had Harboro returned during that brief interval of unconsciousness? She knew he had not. But until the dawn came she sat by her place, steadfastly waiting.
CHAPTER XXX