“I beg your pardon,” he said. “I should not have presumed—”
“I know, I know. If only—”
Then he looked straight at her and talked out.
“You liked me enough to let me speak as I did. I opened my heart to you. I ask no such concession in return. I hope you will not think me presumptuous, but I do not plead now for my happiness, but for yours. Is this irrevocable? Are—you—sure?”
He said the last words so slowly and deliberately that she felt that each of them was cutting the very rock from underneath her. She knew she was at a junction point in her life, and her mind strove to quickly appraise the situation. On one side was this man who had for her so strange and so powerful an appeal. It was only by sheer force of will that she could hold herself aloof from him. But he was a man who had broken with his family and quarrelled with her father—a man whom her father would certainly not for a moment consider as a son-in-law. He was a foreman; practically a ranch hand. Neither Zen nor her father were snobs, and if Grant worked for a living, so did Transley. That was not to be counted against him. The point was, what kind of living did he earn? What Transley had to offer was perhaps on a lower plane, but it was more substantial. It had been approved by her father, and her mother, and herself. It wasn’t as though one man were good and the other bad; it wasn’t as though one thing were right and the other wrong. It would have been easy then....
“I have promised,” she said at last.
She released her hands from his, and, sitting down, silently put on her stocking and boot. She was aware that he was still standing near, as though waiting to be formally dismissed. She walked by him to her horse and put her foot in the stirrup. Then she looked at him and gave her hand a little farewell wave.
Then a great pang, irresistible in its yearning, swept over her. She drew her foot from the stirrup, and, rushing down, threw her arms about his neck....
“I must go,” she said. “I must go. We must both go and forget.”
And Dennison Grant continued his way down the valley while Zen rode back to the Y.D., wondering if she could ever forget.