The next perfect day had worn slowly to another glorious sunset when Anne went again down the big road, but this time toward the Gordon place. Lynn saw her coming, and he arose from his seat on the porch, where he chanced to be sitting alone with his cigar, and went to meet her, thinking how foolish it was for him to be smitten at the first sight of her by a sense of guilt and a painful conviction of having done her an injury. He tried to throw off the feeling with a smile, as he stood holding open the gate for her to enter.
There was no answering smile on Anne's pale face, yet its perfect calmness and the steadiness of her clear gaze reassured him somewhat. Her voice also was quite calm and steady when she said that she could not come in to see his grandmother, as he invited her to do; and after a momentary hesitation added that she had come solely to give him a message from her husband—one that she could not send by any one else.
"Tom has sent me to ask if you will play cards with him again to-night," she said deliberately, in a curiously level tone, as if weighing every word, and with her clear eyes fixed with singular intensity on the young man's face.
"Why—of course I will—I'll be delighted to," Lynn responded eagerly, with much relief. He had not expected her to say anything of this kind. "But, my dear Mrs. Watson, you needn't have taken the trouble to come all this distance yourself to ask me. I should have come willingly, no matter who had brought the request. Mr. Watson had only to tell me when he wished me to come."
"That is why I came. I wanted to make sure that you would come just the same, whether I asked you or not," said Anne, still looking at him with her luminous clearness of gaze, the white light behind her eyes shining high and bright.
"Certainly," he replied quickly, made uneasy by her look, though he knew not why and did not in the least understand what was in the mind of this quiet woman of few words.
She stood silent for a moment, so frail, so pale, under the gloom of the low, dark boughs of the cypress tree, that she seemed more spirit than flesh. Then she silently turned away her clear eyes, in which sorrow lay heavy as stones at the bottom of a still crystal pool. She stood for a moment silently looking far over the shadowed fields, above which the white banners of mist were already afloat on the evening breeze. Her inscrutable gaze then wandered toward the cloud mountains towering in the west, their snowy summits rifted by rivers of molten gold, and flooding the peaceful earth with unearthly beauty.
"Until I knew whether anything that I could say or do would make any difference—about your coming—I could not see my way," she said, turning back, her strange eyes again looking straight into his perplexed eyes. "Now that you have told me, I must do what is right—as nearly as I can."
"I don't understand," faltered the young man. "Would you like me to come with you now—at once? I am quite ready."