“There’s the house,” Diane said, as lightly as she could. “I think papa built it before you went away, didn’t he? It’s only a rambling affair, but we’ve done very well there, and it’s really cozy and warm.”
“I knew it was here, but”—he hesitated—“it’s strange, isn’t it, that my aunt never spoke of your being here?”
“Perhaps she didn’t know it. We’ve been very quiet.” She colored again as she turned toward him. “Won’t you come in and take a cup of tea? I can give you that—though we’re roughing it.”
He hesitated; then, aware, perhaps, that the moment was an awkward one for both, he assented, and followed her down the last slope to the road. They crossed the little bit of lawn together, and Diane’s mountain maid opened the door for them. While she and her mistress went to make tea for him, Overton entered the living-room, and stood looking down at the few logs that were smoldering in the big, open fireplace.
The room was quaint, planned much in the style of a shooting-lodge that Judge Herford had visited abroad. A gun and a rod swung high over the stone mantel-shelf. An old Turkey rug covered the floor, and a couch in the corner suggested that it was sometimes used for an unexpected guest.
On the table Overton saw an elaborate cigarette-case with the initials of Arthur Faunce, and on the mantel, almost under his hand, was a pipe that Faunce must have left there. Nearer, on a chair, were tossed a bit of Diane’s needlework and her work-basket. They had been sitting there together by that fireplace, husband and wife, the woman whom Overton loved and the coward who had left him to perish in those awful wastes!
The touch of intimacy, of actuality, drove the naked reality home. Overton turned from the fireplace with a smothered groan and began to pace the room.
The scene, warm, familiar, poignantly suggestive of her presence, suddenly receded from his mental vision, and the illimitable snows took its place. He saw again a slate-colored sky, a white and dazzling waste, lofty peaks of bluish ice, and the face of Faunce bending over his, distorted with sheer terror, the shrinking eyes avoiding his, the lips blue. The howl of the antarctic blast seemed to sweep over his very soul. He remembered the moment, fraught with the bitterness of death, when, half-rousing from his stupor, he had seen the coward go, when he had realized that the last means of escape had been snatched from him, and that, helpless and wounded, he must perish there alone.
Overton recalled his rage, his hatred of the man who had deserted him, the violence of the spiritual struggle that had torn and wounded his soul until, in one wild moment, he had almost cursed his Maker. It was then, when he had nearly lost his hope of heaven, that he had felt the rush of penitence, of faith. In that illimitable space a Greater Presence had been revealed, and he had felt the gripping power of things unseen and eternal. He had known that, though forsaken, he was not alone; that a Spirit greater than the universe itself was with him. He had cried aloud to God; and surely it was God who had answered him.
Out of the stupor, the terrible frozen mist that had at last benumbed him, body and soul, had come the rescue—the sound of human voices, the touch of strong human hands—and he was saved. But his anger against Faunce, his scorn of the traitor, had survived. Now, as he tried to clear his recollection of it, Overton felt sore that he had not spared him, but had told his rescuers the truth. He remembered their indignation—the indignation that brave men feel against a coward and a weakling.