"But they are past now. You won't have to teach any more, little cousin o' mine. York Macpherson says your land lease expires to-day. So your business transactions here are over, and we'll just throw that ground in the river and forget it."
He might have taken the girl's hand in his as they sat together, but instead he clasped his own hands gracefully and studied their fine outlines.
"I have all the Darby estate in my own name now, you know, and I didn't have to work a stroke at earning it. God! I wonder how a fellow can stand it to work for every dollar he gets until he is comfortably fixed. I simply filled in my banking-hours in a perfunctory way, and I didn't kill myself at it, either. See what I have saved by it for myself and you, and how much better my course was than yours, after all. Just three years of waiting, and dodging all the drudgery I possibly could. And you can just bet I'm a good dodger, Jerry."
Something like a chill went quivering through Jerry Swaim's whole being, but the smile in her eyes seemed fixed there, as Eugene went on:
"Now if I had stuck to art, where would I have been and where would you be right now? I've always wanted to paint the prairies. If I can stand this blasted, crude country long enough, and if I'm not too lazy, we'll play around here a little while, till I have smeared up a few canvases, and then we'll go home, never to return, dear. Art is going to be my pastime hereafter, you know, as it was once my—my—"
"Oh, never mind what it once was." Jerry helped to end the sentence.
The sunset on the Sage Brush was never more radiantly beautiful than it was on this evening, and the long midsummer twilight gave promise of its rarest grandeur of coloring. But a dull veil seemed to be slowly dropping down upon Jerry's world.
Eugene Wellington looked at her keenly.
"Why, Jerry, aren't you happy to see me—glad for us to be together again?" he asked, with just a tinge of sharpness edging his tones.
"I have looked forward to this meeting as a dream, an impossible joy. I hardly realize yet that it isn't a dream any more," Jerry answered him.