For a moment Penelope was very still. It was as though she had not heard me. Then she half-raised herself from the wall. One hand rested there; the other was held out to me in reproof.
"And how have you done it, David? With a year of silence."
"But that day on the Avenue?" I said.
"There were other days on the Avenue which you could have remembered," she returned. "There was that day when we met—after long years. And that day I remembered the valley and the boy who had come into the mountains to help me; I remembered my father's last words to us, and for a little while I was foolish enough to think that it must be for that that I had found you again."
I would have taken the outstretched hand, but she drew it away quickly and stepped back.
"And do you think I had forgotten the mountains that day?" I said. "Why, Penelope, I loved you that day as I love you now, as I have from the morning when you and I rode into the valley together."
I took a step toward her, but she moved from me, and stood with her hands clasped behind her back and her head tilted proudly as she looked up at me.
"It sounds well," she said, her lips curling in disdain. "But how about Miss Dodd, or Miss Todd?"
"Why will you be forever casting that up at me?" I protested. "For a time I did forget. I was a plain fool. But, Penelope——"
"I must be going," she said; but though she pointed toward the slope down which I had come from the little piazza, she really went again to the wall and stood there where I first found her, as though held spellbound by the view.