"I've come to see you, Molly."
Why did she not answer, instead of standing like that, tapping the basin on her knee and looking first at him, and then away, and then at him again? Did she understand at last he loved her? Another man kneeling in homage to her. She was frowning a little bit. He found himself dismounting. The dog, grown friendly now, came forward with waving tail. The hut was empty.
"Mum and Dad went over to the shaft a while back," she said just then. "There's nobody here."
He led the mare a little way away; tethered her; unsaddled her. She drooped her head after the day's work. Another hour he would have led her to drink; but now where was the time?
The girl had gone indoors when he returned to the hut. She stood by the table putting the crockery into the basin. The room was heavy with heat. The lamp wick was untrimmed, smoking a little and lending a needy light. Nothing was changed.
"Them is to wash up," she said.
He was living again, standing thus beside her. Yet he was weary with knowledge that he waited on her for the last time. He grew entranced with her quick hands in the basin. She nodded her head to the dish-rag hanging on the wall. He took it and faced her across the table, and together they began to wash up.
He knew then that whatever waited for him in the long years to be lived before he became an old man—whether there were other women to meet and other lands to travel—these moments he was living now would walk with him in memory to the very shadow of the grave. That strange mood visited him, which sometimes comes to a man, when he stands out of himself and views the scene as onlooker. He peered into future years, when Maud and he journeyed kindly down the road together, and the worst wounds of this summer madness were crusted over. But he knew there would be hours when certain winds blew, or certain scents drifted out of the scrub, or certain words were spoken, when he must go apart a little while until memory slept again.
The mood passed as instantly as it arrived, and once more he stood before her weary and miserable. She would tire of a glum face soon. He had carried a long face lately when they walked together. Beauty she, and he the Beast. Strangely she had passed it by. She was still wilful and careless, yet now she had moods when she was thoughtful and a little kind. Never was she heavy-hearted; though to-night she frowned just a little and was as silent as himself. He heard a rattle of cups. Within his heart—growing and growing with the moments—feeling was in torrent, until it seemed excess in him must overflow and fill her barren little heart. They chanced to look up at one moment from their work—up and out at the door—and a great white star fell down the sky.
"Do you know what people say, Molly? Every falling star is a soul hurrying from earth." She shrugged shoulders with faintest movement. "I think a man's soul dies, Molly, when hope dies. Perhaps some man's hope has died to-night."