She had tried hard to get used to it, and failed. Surely there must be some other way of escape for them both.
Across the hills she thought she heard somebody calling to her, and she scrambled to her feet with a sense of guilt. Time had passed so quickly—she supposed they had got back to the clubhouse and were looking for her.
Feather's coat had fallen to the grass, and as she stooped to recover it a litter of papers and odds and ends tumbled out of one of the pockets.
Marie went down on her knees to gather them up, smiling at the motley collection. There was a bundle of pipe-cleaners and a half- empty packet of cigarettes, a bone pocket knife, some papers that looked like bills and a sheet torn from a bridge scorer with something folded between it—something that fluttered down to the grass—a dead flower!
The color flew to Marie cheeks as she stooped to pick it up. It was a faded blossom of love-in-a-mist—the flower she herself had given to Feathers the last time they drove this way.
She held it in her band for a moment, her eyes a little misty, then she unfolded the page from the bridge scorer and put it back in its place, and on the inside of the paper, scrawled in Feather's writing, were the words "Marie Celeste," and the date of the day she had given it to him.
Marie sat down on the grass with a little feeling of unreality. Why had he kept it? She shut her eyes and conjured up his kind, ugly 197 face, and all at once it was as if a burning ray of light penetrated her mind, showing her the thing he had never meant her to see.
He loved her! She could not have explained how it was that she knew or why she was so sure, but it came home to her with a conviction that would not be denied. He loved her.
How blind she had been not to have known all along! A hundred and one little incidents of their friendship came crowding back to her, fraught with a new meaning and significance.
He loved her, and his was a love so well worth having; a love that would make a woman perfectly contented and happy, that would allow of no room for jealous doubts or bitterness, that would be like the clasp of his hand, strong and all enfolding.