If any of the bitterness McCoy had felt toward her when his wound was fresh survived the years it must have died now. Life had dealt harshly with her. There had been a time when she was the belle of all this ranch country, when she had bloomed with health and spirits, had been as full of fire as an unbroken bronco. Now her step dragged. The spark of frolicsome deviltry had long been quenched from her eye. Her pride had been dragged in the dust, her courage brutally derided. Even the good looks with which she had queened it were marred. She was on the way to become that unattractive creature, the household drudge. Yet on her latest birthday she had reached only the age of twenty-six.
At recognition of the man in the car she gave a startled little cry:
“You—Rowan!”
It was the first time they had been alone together in seven years, the first time she had directly addressed him since the hour of their quarrel. At the unexpectedness of the meeting emotion welled up in her throat and registered there like the quicksilver in a thermometer.
He tossed her grip into the back of the car, along with his own, and turned to help her to the seat beside the driver. For just an instant she hesitated, then with a bitter, choking little laugh gave way. What else could she do? It was merely another ironic blow of fate that the lover she had discarded should be the man to help her fly from the destiny her wilfulness had invited.
In silence they sat knee to knee while the car rolled the miles. The distant hills and valleys which slid indistinguishably into each other detached themselves as they approached, took on individuality, vanished in the dusty rear.
Neither of them welcomed the chance that had thrown them together again. It shocked the pride of the woman, put her under an obligation to the man against whom she had nursed resentment for years. His presence stressed the degradation into which she seemed to herself to have fallen. For him, too, the meeting was untimely. To-day of all days he wanted to forget the past, to turn over a page that was to begin the story of a new record. Deliberately he had shut the door on the story of his unhappy love for Norma Davis, and with an impish grin fate had flung it open again.
The heady wilfulness of the girl had given place to the tight-lipped self-repression of a suffering woman. Not once in all the years had she complained to an outsider. But her flight was a confession. The stress of her feeling overflowed into words bitter and stinging.
“You’ve got your revenge, Rowan McCoy. If I treated you shabbily you can say ‘I told you so’ now. They used to say I was too proud. Maybe I was. Well, I’ve been paid for it a thousand times. I’ve got mighty little to be proud of to-day.”
“Norma!” he pleaded in a low voice.