"Yes, they looked tame," Moya answered dryly. "So tame I'm sure they'd like to crucify you."
"I daresay they would, but in this world a man can't get everything he would like. I've wanted two or three pleasures myself that I didn't get."
His gaze happened to turn toward Joyce as he was speaking. He had been thinking of nothing definite, but at the meeting of their eyes something flashed into birth and passed from one to the other like an electric current. Jack knew now something that he wanted, but he did not admit that he could not get it. If she cared for him—and what else had her eyes told him in the golden glow of that electric moment?—a hundred Verinders and Lady Farquhar could not keep them apart.
His heart sang jubilantly. He rose abruptly and left the room because he was afraid he could not veil his feeling.
Joyce smiled happily. "Where is he going?" she asked innocently.
Moya looked at her and then turned her eyes away. She had understood the significance of what she had seen and a door in her heart that had been open for weeks clanged shut.
"I don't know, unless to get the horses," she said quietly.
A few minutes later he returned, leading the animals. From the door of the shaft-house the Cornishmen watched them mount and ride away. The men smoked in sullen silence.
