“Oh!” and Virginia waited for him to go on.
“I gather that this brother of Walsh's is entirely irresponsible. In the first place his business did not fail; he disposed of it at a remunerative figure.”
“And the money which was left for Jane is lost?” asked Virginia.
“That seems to be the case. In fact Walsh has himself sailed for California.”
They were silent. Benson had said all there was to say, yet he made no move to go. That he had not seen Mrs. Walsh did not matter since the real purpose of his drive to the farm had been accomplished. He had seen Virginia; he had lacked the strength to deny himself this perilous joy. Away from her he forgot rebuffs and slights; he remembered only her beauty, the depths of her eyes; the poise of her head; some swift graceful gesture; and he lived in the spell of these things; and the desire, strong and not to be denied, to see her, would assert itself. To be near her was to feel himself ennobled, to thrill with a curious sense of purification; but he was conscious that his feeling for her, which had grown out of a boyish admiration for a woman's beauty that seemed finer and nobler than anything he had known in a woman before, was sweeping him away by imperceptible gradations from all his ideals of conduct and manhood; yet he would have been loath to call this secret ecstasy he knew in her presence, love. In his moments of self-searching he told himself that her indifference more than punished him for the pleasure he derived from being near her; but he expected to suffer; that was something he could not hope to escape.
Virginia moved impatiently.
“I will tell Jane all you have told me, when I think she is able to bear it. It will be a terrible disappointment to her.” Then she shot him a swift glance. “You have not heard from Stephen?” she spoke unsteadily, and to Benson it seemed reluctantly as well.
“Not since he left Fort Laramie. I suppose we can hardly realize the difficulties he encounters in sending his letters East for mailing, here we have every modern convenience; the stage each day—”
Her grave eyes were bent upon his face; she was seeking to determine the depth of his conviction.
“What would you do if it was one you loved who was so strangely silent, who had gone, and from whom you could not hear?” she asked.