Only the faintest gray survived in the sky above the trees. The shadows were thick about them. The whispering snow urged him to use this moment for his happiness. It wasn't the thought of Graham that held him back. Last night, under an equal temptation, he might have spoken. To-night a new element silenced him and bound his eager hands. His awakening at the head of the stairs raised an obstacle to self-revelation around which there seemed to exist no path.
"I'm sorry. Let us go back," he said.
She looked at him inquiringly.
"What is it, Bobby? You are more afraid to-day than you have ever been before. Has something happened I know nothing of?"
He shook his head. He couldn't increase her own trouble by telling her of that.
The woods seemed to receive an ashy illumination from the passage of the snowflakes. Katherine walked a little faster.
"Don't be discouraged, Bobby," she begged him. "Everything will come out straight. You must keep telling yourself that. You must fight until you believe it."
The nearness of her dusk-clothed, slender figure filled him with a new courage, obscured to an extent his real situation. He burst out impulsively:
"Don't worry. I'll fight. I'll make myself believe. If necessary I'll tell everything I know in order to find the guilty person."
She placed her hand on his arm. Her voice fell to a whisper.