They had reached Cynthia's house, and they were talking at the side door, as they had the night before, when there had been hope for her in the newness of her calamity, before she had yet fully imagined it.
Jeff made no answer to her last words. He asked, “Am I going to see you again?”
“I guess not. I don't believe I shall be up before you start.”
“All right. Good-bye, then.” He held out his hand, and she put hers in it for the moment he chose to hold it. Then he turned and slowly climbed the hill.
Cynthia was still lying with her face in her pillow when her father came into the dark little house, and peered into her room with the newly lighted lamp in his hand. She turned her face quickly over and looked at him with dry and shining eyes.
“Well, it's all over with Jeff and me, father.”
“Well, I'm satisfied,” said Whitwell. “If you could ha' made it up, so you could ha' felt right about it, I shouldn't ha' had anything to say against it, but I'm glad it's turned out the way it has. He's a comical devil, and he always was, and I'm glad you a'n't takin' on about him any more. You used to have so much spirit when you was little.”
“Oh,—spirit! You don't know how much spirit I've had, now.”
“Well, I presume not,” Whitwell assented.
“I've been thinking,” said the girl, after a little pause, “that we shall have to go away from here.”