Emil strode forward. He looked passionate. But she ignored his proffered hand and accepted Zarah's assistance into the cart. Once perched on the high seat, she nodded proudly in the direction of him whom she had so lately kissed.
Like many another woman if she could have erased the tender incident from the scroll of her days, if she even could have told herself with honesty that Emil had been the only moved one, she would willingly have given half her life.
"But I kissed him back—I did! I did! and there's no use pretending otherwise," she confessed in helpless stony abasement.
And throughout the night, in intervals of sleeplessness, she continued to sigh because of the torturing memory.
CHAPTER XI
AT THE OLD BURYING POINT
By the next morning the incident just recorded had taken on to Rachel a somewhat different tinge. Her sense of humiliation had so far abated as to admit of her entertaining a feeling of pity for Emil. He certainly had appeared a disconsolate and astounded figure as he stood there gazing after her as she drove away. She wished now that she had not left so precipitately, or, at least, that she had not declined his proffered assistance when mounting into the cart.
By an altered reasoning the apology which had offended her yesterday, now gratified her. As a gentleman who had been guilty of the grave misdemeanour of kissing a lady, he could not have acted differently; for she now thrust the entire blame of the incident on his masculine shoulders. "It certainly was his fault in the first place," she argued. And, having shifted the ground of resentment from the apology for the kiss to the kiss itself, she resolved to forgive the wrong-doer.
The greater part of the day she spent in wandering on the shore of the bay. Whenever she went there, instinctively she glanced at the mound of sand where, on the occasion of their first meeting, she had seen Emil bury the torn scraps of a letter. Not that she would have touched the mound for the world, but the strictest would not censure a glance of curiosity in that direction. Owing to its protection from the wind, the little grave, strangely enough, had remained intact. But this morning a scrap of paper appeared on the beach bearing, in what was incontestably a woman's handwriting, the single word "Dearest."
Scarcely cognizant of what she did, Rachel, like a feminine Crusoe, hovered over this bit of evidence on the sand. Like the legendary hero her consciousness of being alone was destroyed, but with different effect, for instead of an expression of surprise not unmixed with fear, her look was one of suspicious misery.