He did not finish his sentence, but she knew what was in his mind: the great loneliness of the prairie. Out in the white night came the short, sharp yap of a wolf.
"I am not afraid," she said again.
"I shall be gone only one night," he said.
"I have often been a night alone."
"I know," he said; "but somehow it's worse leaving you with so much money in the house."
"No one knows it will be there."
"That is true, except that every one knows I have been collecting large sums."
"They will think you have gone to pay it in as usual."
"Yes," he said with an effort.
Then he got up, and went to his tool-box. She watched him open it, seeing him in a new light which encompassed him with even greater love. "If I tell him to-night," she thought, "it will make him still more anxious about leaving me. Perhaps he would refuse to go, and he must go. I will not tell him till he comes back."