“It’s awful, me makin’ you do this,” she added. “Don’t you think I don’t know that.”
“I ain’t doin’ anything—what am I doin’?” he burst out.
She looked at him gravely.
“You’re takin’ me out of a good sight worse’n death,” she answered. “And don’t you think I’ll ever forget it.”
There was about her manner of saying this something infinitely alluring. She fell in a sudden breathlessness, and her voice had a tremor which seemed to lie in the very words themselves. And with this, and with what she said, the Inger found himself suddenly utterly unable to deal.
“Oh, g’on,” he said, feebly.
She said no more, and for a moment he was wretched again lest he had offended her. But the gentleness and softness of her manner reassured him. Moreover, he became conscious that of the cheese and bread she was leaving the greater part for him, and pretending to have finished.
After their lunch, a consuming content fell upon the man, and he lay stretched on his back, under the pine, staring upward, thinking of nothing. For a little she moved about, and then she came and sat beside him, saying nothing. More than he knew, this power of hers for silence conquered him. When a man knows how to live alone, he may or may not understand words, but he always understands silence.
Presently he looked over at her, and seeing that her eyes were heavy, he sat erect, with the memory of her night’s vigil.