But how had he expected her to know anything of any man but the one she loved? She did not know, she had answered him; she had not thought to think of it.
And she had not slept through the long night hours, nor had he, and in the morning the fever was high again.
In the dragging feebleness of his convalescence both had avoided any reference to the revelation that night. Things went on as before, but the humble devotion and care of Frazer's Mexican protégée was as properly interpreted by the quick camp instinct as it was immediately acquiesced in and forgotten.
From this time Frazer had little communication with the civilization he had deserted, and none whatever with the woman who waited in the South in silence and the suffering of doubt. He remembered the utter emptiness of his life and his hope as the following years of his toil and alertness yielded him only bitterer disappointments. There came children now, little dark miniatures of their stout, faded mother, whose heart was as full of reverence and love for him as was her girl's heart, and who seemed not to know that the hours which he lived with her were lost hours.
It was on his way home to her one night, in the gentleness which masked his hideous unrest, that his eye discovered the ledge of quartz which had more than laid the foundation of that success he had early strived for. It had not taken long to form a company, and before the year was out gold came to his pocket in as unsweated for a fashion as the air to his lungs.
The men, his partners, had thrown back their shoulders and inflated their chests. The blood ran in their veins to more composite measure, and they planned diversion and further manipulation after their different natures. Three of them were for the East and the world again—and, O God! but the frenzy in his own brain. They had come to him seriously as man to man and explained their sense of his absolute insanity in throwing up the entire future of his career by life in this place, tied down in his fashion. Other men,—they themselves,—were under obligation, but not so deeply that money would not bridge it and—damn it!—friends and family must have some consideration in successful men's lives.
That night had been another so strongly accented that its impression would, never fade. He had sat at the oilclothed table, in the little cabin, and tried to sufficiently detach himself from the children and himself to get an unbiased view-point. He could see only the light of her love in her eyes, the child-love in theirs, and, through their gentle subjection, their genuine faith in and dependence on him. The shabbiness of his environment she did not permit to become slovenly, but the common vulgarity of it all surged through his eyes like light. He had sent the children from him and gone out into the pines, until the vast, sweet silence of their majesty laid more on him than he could bear.
As he came in the door she had handed him a letter left by a miner on his way from camp. She had lighted two candles, and pulled up his chair, and hushed the talking of the children in their bed. She had sat near and searched his face for what the actual possession of the letter could not have given her, and felt only misunderstanding because she had never seen a struggle between the spirit's life and death.
Frazer had read, "Whatever the mistake, we can yet outlive the pain of it. I am waiting for you." She had signed the name he had made for her, and he could not look at it twice for the blinding tears under his lids.
Geraldine was waiting for him!