She shook her head. “I was afraid,” she answered, simply.
The Inger stood for a moment as if the strength had run from his body. She had sat there, afraid, while he had slept—and he himself had been a part of her fear....
He turned away, and across the tops of the trees, he looked over the valley, still lying in the shadow. There was mist, and down there the pointed tops of the trees showed like green buds fastened to soft wool. Where they two were, the sun was already smiting the branches, and silencing the birds. Overhead, the clear blue, touched by sunny clouds, lay very near. It was as if he were trying to find, among them, something that could help him to tell her what he was feeling. But he found nothing and he said nothing. He caught up the blanket and flung it savagely aside, seized a great dead limb lying beside him and broke it over his knee.
“Get out the stuff,” he bade her. “We’ll have a fire.”
He built and lighted the fire, brought the water, and found his way down to the brook. He threw off his clothes, and lay flat in the bed of the stream, his head on a rock. The sharp stones cut his flesh, and the water somehow helped to heal him. He shook himself, dried by a run down the trail, dressed, and returned, glowing.
The coffee was on the fire, and she was making toast on a stick. She had spread what food she had brought, chiefly fruit and cooked meat and cheese.
“Didn’t I bring any grub?” he demanded.
“The bird,” she answered. “The big bird.”
“That’s for dinner,” he observed, gruffly, and said no more.
He took the stick from her and made the toast. When she poured the coffee, it was clear and golden and fragrant. She had two plates and two cups, the Inger noticed. She made him roll the blankets for seats. In spite of his suffering—which was the more real that it was new to him—the cheer and the invitation of the time warmed him. But as for her loveliness, he found himself now hardly looking at that, save when he must, as if what she was had become to him something utterly forbidden.