The ride, in spite of all, was pleasant. For a while neither of them spoke. Then Francis did.
"I feel as if this was unfair to you—for apparently the O'Maras think, and I suppose everybody will, that you really are doing this to show your fondness for me. I shall have to ask you to let them think so."
"I have," she answered curtly.
"You don't understand. I—I am going to have to stay in the cabin with you. . . . There is the little upstairs balcony, I can bunk in that. You know—the one over the door, with the little winding stair leading up to it. I—I'm sorry."
This was one more thing Marjorie hadn't counted on. But after all what did it matter? She expected to be so deadly tired from the work she had promised to do that she would never know whether Francis was in the house at all. And if there really were bears once in awhile it would really be better not to be all alone with them.
"Very well," she said. She looked hungrily at the thick trees they were speeding through. She supposed she would never have time to lie out under a tree, or go hunting for flowers and new little wood-paths again. She had read stories of lone, draggled women in logging-camps, toiling so hard they hadn't even time to comb their hair, but always wore it pulled back tight from their forehead. This wasn't a logging-camp, but she supposed there was very little difference.
She was very quiet for awhile. Francis, turning finally, a little uneasy, found that she was quietly crying. It happened that he had never seen her cry before.
"Please, Marjorie!" he begged in a terrified voice. "Please stop! Is there anything I can do?"
"You have done everything," she said in a little quiet voice that tried not to break, but did, most movingly, on the last word.
She said nothing more after that. After awhile she got hold of herself, dried her eyes, and began to watch the woods desperately again, as if she would never see them any more. If she had but known it, she was making Francis suffer as much as she was suffering herself.