The reason was waiting for him on the platform. She wore a white flannel sport skirt and a scarlet coat of jersey and a black hat with scarlet poppies on it, and she glowed like a poppy herself in heat which wilted other people and made them look faded and drained.
She was driving Aleck’s car, a seasoned and dependable old vehicle, and they said very little, after the necessities of luggage had been seen to, until they had left the town behind and were mounting into the hills. It was hot; Dean Wolcott thought he had never known such heat, but it had a fine, dry, shimmering quality; the breeze, though it might have blown out of an oven, was electric, bracing. He took off his hat and let the sun shine on his head and the wind muss up the precision of his hair. Ginger did not look at him; she never took her eyes from the road when she was driving—a promise she had made Aleck—but she could feel that he was looking at her. She felt very silent and shy and a good deal frightened.
Dean, on the other hand, was feeling, with every minute and every mile, more serene confidence; a greater sense of glad decision. This was why he had come; he must always have known, secretly, in his depths.
“I want to see the bridge,” he said, after the longest of their pauses.
“Yes. I’ll tell you when to begin looking. You can see it a long way.” Eyes rigidly front, even though they had left the worst of the grade now.
He knew that she was frightened and it made him feel tremendously triumphant; surer of himself than he had been since he went down on the last day of fighting.
“Now you can see the bridge,” said Ginger, lifting one hand from the wheel to point it out to him.
“Yes,” said Dean. He did not speak again until they had reached it. Then pride rose in him for an instant. “It is good,” he sighed, contentedly. “I couldn’t be sure. It’s good!” He got out of the car and waited for her to follow, but she would not.
“No; I want you to see it first—alone.”
He went over it, beyond it; stood well away from it and studied it. Then he came on to it again, halting half-way, looking at her. “Now will you come?”