Sara descended from the ladder before she replied. Then she remarked composedly—
“It has taken precisely seven days, apparently, for that sense of responsibility to develop.”
“On the contrary, for seven days my thirst for knowledge has been only restrained by the pointings of conscience.”
“Then”—she spoke rather low—“was it conscience pointing you—away from Sunnyside?”
His hazel eyes flashed over her face.
“Perhaps it was—discretion,” he suggested. “Looking in at shop windows when one has an empty purse is a poor occupation—and one to be avoided.”
“Did you want to come?” she persisted gently.
Half absently he had cut off a piece of dead wood from the rose-bush next him and was twisting it idly to and fro between his fingers. At her words, the dead wood stem snapped suddenly in his clenched hand. For an instant he seemed about to make some passionate rejoinder. Then he slowly unclenched his hand and the broken twig fell to the ground.
“Haven't I made it clear to you—yet,” he said slowly, “that what I want doesn't enter into the scheme of things at all?”
The brief speech held a sense of impending finality, and, in the silence which followed, the eyes of the man and woman met, questioned each other desperately, and answered.