"But what?"
"Oh, I want you to feel sorry."
"Don't say any more," she returned. "Let us be friends again." She put out her hand, he took it, picked up her fan, laid it on the table, and saying "Thank you!" opened the door towards which she moved and closed it after her.
"And so"—she kept saying to herself—"we are to be no more than friends." She sat still staring across the hall, trying to read. She was fast losing control of the woman who was fenced in by social rule and custom, trained to suppress emotion and to be the steady mistress of insurgent passion. "My God," she murmured, "I should never have been angry when he bought me, if I had not loved him—and now it is all over—perhaps!"
Some readjustment there may have been, for when he reentered the hall an hour later, she was reading. He said, as she looked up, "I mean to have a long tramp to-morrow. I shall start early and walk to the mills and on to the ore-beds. Then I shall return over the hills back of Westways, and bring you, I hope, a few wood-pigeons. I may be a little late for dinner."
"But, John, it is quite twelve miles, and you will have to carry a gun—and your arm—"
John laughed happy laughter. "That was so like Aunt Ann!"
"Was it?—and now you will say 'yes, yes, you are quite right,' and walk away and do just as you meant to do, like Uncle Jim."
"I may, but I will not walk further than Grey Pine." The air had cleared—he had done some good!
"Good-night," he said, "it is late."