"I wish I had!" she cried with passion, and beat her hands on the ground. "Oh why did I leave her?"
He cleared his throat. "It's folly this!" he urged. "It's--it's of no use to any one. No good! And there, now it's dark. I told you so--and we shall have fine work getting to the road again!"
She did not answer, but little by little his meaning reached her brain, and after a minute or two she sat up, her crying less violent. "That's better," he said. "But you are too tired to go farther. Let me help you to climb the fence. There's a log the other side--I stumbled over it. You can sit on it until you are rested."
She did not assent, but she suffered him to help her through the hedge and seat her on the fallen tree. The tide of grief had ebbed; she was regaining her self-control, though now and again a sob shook her. But he saw that an interval must pass before she could travel, and he stood, shy and silent, seeing her dimly by the light which the moon still shed through a flying wrack of clouds. Round and below them lay the country, still, shadowy, mysterious; stretching away into unknown infinities, framing them in a solitude perfect and complete. They might have been the only persons in the world.
By-and-by, whether he was tired, or really had a desire to comfort her at closer quarters, he sat down on the tree; and by chance his hand touched her hand. She sprang a foot away, and uttered a cry. He laughed softly.
"You need not be afraid," he said. "I've seen enough of women to last me my life. If you were the only woman in the world, and the most beautiful, you would be safe enough for me. You may be quite easy, my dear."
She ceased to sob, but her voice was a little broken and husky when she spoke. "I'm very sorry," she said humbly. "I am afraid I have given you a vast deal of trouble, sir."
"Not so much as a woman has given me before this," he answered.
She looked at him furtively out of the tail of her eye, as a woman at that would be likely to look. And if the truth be told she felt, amid all her grief, an inclination to laugh. But with feminine tact she suppressed this. "And yet--and yet you came to help me?" she muttered.
He shrugged his shoulders. "One has to do certain things," he said.