It was blindingly intense, and when his senses cleared
he knew that she was gone. He felt as if he had
awakened from a night full of dreams more vivid than
life—dreams which left him too weak to cope
with reality.
For a time he dared not move. He was feeling
for himself like a man who fumbles his way down a
dark passage dangerous with obstructions. At last
it was as if his hand touched the knob of a door; he
swung it open, entered a room full of dazzling light—himself.
He shrank back from it; closed his eyes against what
he might see.
All he knew, then, was an overpowering will to see
her. He turned, inch by inch, little degree by
degree, knowing that if, when he turned, he looked
into her eyes, the end would rush upon them, overwhelm
them, carry them along like straws on the flooding
river. At last his head was turned; he looked.
She lay on her back, smiling as she slept. One
arm hung down from the bunk and the graceful fingers
trailed, palm up, on the floor, curling a little,
as if she had just relaxed her grasp on something.
And down past her shoulder, half covering the whiteness
of her arm, fled the torrent of brown hair, with the
firelight playing through it like a sunlit mist.
He rose, and dressed with a deadly caution, for he
knew that he must go at once, partly for her sake
that he must be seen apart from her this night—partly
because he knew that he must leave and never come back.
He had hit upon the distinctive feature of the girl—a
purity as thin and clear as the air of the uplands
in which she drew breath. He stooped and smoothed
down the blankets of his bunk, for no trace of him
must be seen if any other man should come during this
night. He would go far away—see and
be seen—apart from Sally Fortune. He
picked up his saddle.
Before he departed he leaned low above her as she
must have done above him, until the dark shadow of
lashes was tremulous against her cheek. Then
he straightened and stole step by step across the floor,
to the door, to the night; all the myriad small white
eyes of the heavens looked down to him in hushed surprise.
JERRY WOOD
When he was at the old Drew place before, Logan had
told him of Jerry Wood’s place, five miles to
the north among the hills; and to this he now directed
his horse, riding at a merciless speed, as if he strove
to gain, from the swift succession of rocks and trees
that whirled past him, new thoughts to supplant the
ones which already occupied him.
He reached in a short time a little rise of ground
below which stretched a darkly wooded hollow, and
in the midst the trees gave back from a small house,
a two-storied affair, with not a light showing.
He wished to announce himself and his name at this
place under the pretence of asking harbourage for
the brief remainder of the night. The news of
what he had done at Drew’s place could not have
travelled before him to Wood’s house; but the
next day it would be sure to come, and Wood could
say that he had seen Bard—alone—the
previous night. It would be a sufficient shield
for the name of Sally Fortune in that incurious region.
