“Oh, I don’t think anything at all of either you or your folly. I tell you I merely want to get away.”
“Won’t you take the ring with you?”
She stood for a long time with head bowed.
“I don’t suppose it makes any difference one way or the other,” she said at last.
“Of course it doesn’t. I told you it wouldn’t.”
“Very well, I shall take the ring, if you will accept a much cheaper and more significant present from me in the morning.”
“I shall accept gratefully anything you like to give me, Miss Fuller, in the morning or at any future time.”
“I wonder,” was all her comment, as she took the ring and instantly disappeared.
Somehow this night held none of the glamour that distinguished the previous evening. The depth of the profound shadows surrounding him was merely emphasised by the touch of cold moonlight on the hilltops far away. John wondered if the exhilarating effect of the atmosphere had departed, leaving him sober again. He felt strangely depressed, and although he immediately entered his tent and flung himself, dressed as he was, upon his canvas cot, he found it difficult to sleep. It was after midnight before he dozed off, and then his slumber was troubled and uneasy. Towards morning, however, a kind of stupor descended upon him, leaving him dreamless and lost to the world. This was broken by a sharp and angry voice, whose meaning did not at first reach his consciousness; but the sentence lingered in his awakening mind and at last became clear to him, as an image comes out during the gradual development of a photographic plate.
“I tell you I will not leave until I bid ‘good-bye’ to Mr. Steele.”