She ceased dabbing for a moment to give me a half-moist look. “Here, do you mean?”
“Why, of course.”
“I found what I wanted, but it wasn’t here. This was afterward. I somehow had a feeling that you would come here and discover me sooner or later. These inane tears.”
I brooded on this for a while, while she removed the last traces of them. “I suppose it’s no good asking where you found what you really wanted?”
“Why, yes—up there on Mynydd Tarw.”
“But at least you aren’t bringing it back with you as you declared you would, are you?”
She gave a strange laugh. “It was too big, a million times too big. So I have to be satisfied with carrying it here.” She placed a finger against her forehead. “Now I am ready, sir, if you’ll take me back down with you. Please let’s go now. There is so much to be done to-night.”
“You shall rest to-night, nothing else.”
“On the contrary—don’t think I’m rude—there’s everything else. Yes, yes, really. Come, let’s go.”
She picked up the little campstool, but I took it from her. Slowly we turned and went away from that place, and while we passed through a huddling hazel wood where sheep had made a track before us, the sun at last thridded the mist with hazy golden beams. While we descended the glen, I looked at her face with the light playing upon its firm, rounded surfaces and gleaming in her eyes. She was weary, indeed, with what seemed more than physical exhaustion; I slipped my arm about her when she appeared almost unable to pick her footing on the precarious slope. But, “Oh, no, no,” she said, resisting so softly that I pitied her, and took my arm away.