“Thot’s it.  Thot’s it.”  Never had he been so well interpreted.

“It’s that—­and it’s because you miss him so awfully.”

“Wall—­” He seemed inclined, in sheer honesty, to deprecate the extreme and passionate emotion she suggested.  I would n’ saay—­O’ course, I sort o’ miss him.  I caann’t afford to lose a friend—­I ’aven’t so many of ’em.”

“I know.  It’s the waters of Babylon, and you’re hanging up your voice in the willow tree.”  She could be gay and fluent enough with Greatorex, who was nothing to her.  “But it’s an awful pity.  A willow tree can’t do anything with a big barytone voice hung up in it.”

He laughed then.  And afterward, whenever he thought of it, he laughed.

She saw that he had adopted his attitude first of all in resentment, that he had continued it as a passionate, melancholy pose, and that he was only keeping it up through sheer obstinacy.  He would be glad of a decent excuse to abandon it, if he could find one.

“And your friend must have been proud of your voice, wasn’t he?”

“He sat more store by it than what I do.  It was he, look yo, who trained me so as I could sing proper.”

“Well, then, he must have taken some trouble over it.  Do you think he’d like you to go and hang it up in a willow tree?”

Greatorex looked up, showing a shamefaced smile.  The little lass had beaten him.

“Coom to think of it, I doan’ knaw as he would like it mooch.”

“Of course he wouldn’t like it.  It would be wasting what he’d done.”

“So ’t would.  I naver thought of it like thot.”

She rose.  She knew the moment of surrender, and she knew, woman-like, that it must not be overpassed.  She stood before him, drawing on her gloves, fastening her squirrel collar and settling her chin in the warm fur with the movement of a small burrowing animal, a movement that captivated Greatorex.  Then, deliberately and finally, she held out her hand.

“Good-bye, Mr. Greatorex.  It’s all right, isn’t it?  You’re coming to sing for him, you know, not for us.”

“I’m coomin’,” said Greatorex.

She settled her chin again, tucked her hands away in the squirrel muff and went quickly toward the door.  He followed.

“Let me putt Daasy in t’ trap, Miss Cartaret, and drive yo’ home.”

“I wouldn’t think of it.  Thank you all the same.”

She was in the kitchen now, on the outer threshold.  He followed her there.

“Miss Cartaret—­”

She turned.  “Well?”

His face was flushed to the eyes.  He struggled visibly for expression.  “Yo’ moosn’ saay I doan’ like yo’.  Fer it’s nat the truth.”

“I’m glad it isn’t,” she said.

He walked with her down the bridle path to the gate.  He was dumb after his apocalypse.

They parted at the gate.

With long, slow, thoughtful strides Greatorex returned along the bridle path to his house.