Silence fell, and in it the girl's mind wandered on and on. At last, abrupt as before, abstractedly as before, came a new thought, a new query.
"Is happiness, after all, the chief end of life, How?" she questioned.
"Happiness, Bess?" He halted. "Happiness?" repeated; but there was no irony in the voice, only, had the girl noticed, a terrible mute pain. "How should I know what is best in life, I, who have never known life at all?"
Blind in her own abstraction, the girl had not read beneath the words themselves, did not notice the thinly veiled inference.
"But you must have an idea," she pressed. "Tell me."
This time the answer was not concealed. It stood forth glaring, where the running might read.
"Yes, I have an idea—and more," he said. "Happiness, your happiness, has always been the first thing in my life."
Again silence walled them in, a longer silence than before. Step by step, gropingly, the girl was advancing on her journey. Step by step she was drawing away from her companion; yet though, wide-eyed, he watched her every motion, felt the distance separating grow wider and wider, he made no move to prevent, threw no obstacle in her path. Deliberately from his grip, from beneath his very eyes, fate, the relentless, was filching his one ewe lamb; yet he gave no sign of the knowledge, spoke no word of unkindness or of hate. Nature, the all-observing, could not but have admired her child that night.
One more advance the girl made; and that was the last. Before she had walked gropingly, as though uncertain of her pathway. Now there was no hesitation. The move was deliberate; even certain.
"I know you'll think I'm foolish, How," she began swiftly, "but I haven't much to think about, and so little things appeal to me." She paused and again her folded arms reversed beneath her head. "I've been watching 'Shaggy,' the wolf here, since he grew up; watched him become restless week by week. Last night,—you didn't notice, but I did,—I heard another wolf call away out on the prairie, and I got up to see what Shaggy would do. Somehow I seemed to understand how he'd feel, and I came out here, out where we are now, and looked down toward the barn. It was moonlight last night, and I could see everything clearly, almost as clearly as day. There hadn't been a sound while I was getting up; but all at once as I stood watching the call was repeated from somewhere away off in the distance. Before, Shaggy hadn't stirred. He was standing there, where you had chained him, just outside the door; but when that second call came, it was too much. He started to go, did go as far as he could; then the collar choked him and he realised where he was. He didn't make a sound, he didn't fight or rebel against something he couldn't help; but the way he looked, there in the moonlight, with the chain stretched across his back—" She halted abruptly, of a sudden sat up. "I know it's childish, but promise me, How, you'll let him go," she pleaded. "He's wild, and the wild was calling to him. Please promise me you'll let him go!"