He began to laugh: "Is _that_ what you"re thinking about?"
"I--never can--forget----"
"Nonsense. We"re quits anyway. Do you remember what I did to _you_?"
He was thinking of the handcuffs. Then, in her vivid blush he read what she was thinking. And he remembered his lips on her palms.
He, too, now was blushing brilliantly at memory of that swift, sudden rush of romantic tenderness which this girl had witnessed that memorable day on Owl Marsh.
In the hot, uncomfortable silence, neither spoke. He seated himself after a while. And, after a while, she turned on her pillow part way toward him.
Somehow they both understood that it was friendship which had subtly filled the interval that separated them since that amazing day.
"I"ve often thought of you," he said,--as though they had been discussing his absence.
No hour of the waking day that she had not thought of him. But she did not say so now. After a little while:
"Is yours a lonely life?" she asked in a low voice.
"Sometimes. But I love the forest."
"Sometimes," she said, "the forest seems like a trap that I can"t escape. Sometimes I hate it."
"Are you lonely, Eve?"
"As you are. You see I know what the outside world is. I miss it."
"You were in boarding school and college."
"Yes."
"It must be hard for you here at Star Pond."
The girl sighed, unconsciously:
"There are days when I--can scarcely--stand it.... The wilderness would be more endurable if dad and I were all alone.... But even then----"
"You need young people of your own age,--educated companions----"
"I need the city, Mr. Stormont. I need all it can give: I"m starving for it. That"s all."
She turned on her pillow, and he saw that she was smiling faintly. Her face bore no trace of the tragic truth she had uttered. But the tragedy was plain enough to him, even without her pa.s.sionless words of revolt.
The situation of this young, educated girl, aglow with youth, fettered, body and mind, to the squalor of Clinch"s dump, was perfectly plain to anybody.
She said, seeing his troubled expression: "I"m sorry I spoke that way."
"I knew how you must feel, anyway."
"It seems ungrateful," she murmured. "I love my step-father."
"You"ve proven that," he remarked with a dry humour that brought the hot flush to her face again.
"I must have been crazy that day," she said. "It scares me to remember what I tried to do.... What a frightful thing--if I had killed you----How _can_ you forgive me?"
"How can you forgive _me_, Eve?"
She turned her head: "I do."
"Entirely?"
"Yes."
He said,--a slight emotion noticeable in his voice: "Well, I forgave you before the darned gun exploded in our hands."
"How _could_ you?" she protested.
"I was thinking all the while that you were acting as I"d have acted if anything threatened _my_ father."
"Were you thinking of _that_?"
"Yes,--and also how to get hold of you before you shot me." He began to laugh.
After a moment she turned her head to look at him, and her smile glimmered, responsive to his amus.e.m.e.nt. But she shivered slightly, too.
"How about that egg?" he inquired.
"I can get up----"
"Better keep off your feet. What is there in the pantry? You must be starved."
"I could eat a little before supper time," she admitted. "I forgot to take my lunch with me this morning. It is still there in the pantry on the bread box, wrapped up in brown paper, just as I left it----"
She half rose in bed, supported on one arm, her curly brown-gold hair framing her face:
"--Two cakes of sugar-milk chocolate in a flat brown packet tied with a string," she explained, smiling at his amus.e.m.e.nt.
So he went down to the pantry and discovered the parcel on the bread box where she had left it that morning before starting for the cache on Owl Marsh.
He brought it to her, placed both pillows upright behind her, stepped back gaily to admire the effect. Eve, with her parcel in her hands, laughed shyly at his comedy.
"Begin on your chocolate," he said. "I"m going back to fix you some bread and b.u.t.ter and a cup of tea."
When again he had disappeared, the girl, still smiling, began to untie her packet, unhurriedly, slowly loosening string and wrapping.
Her attention was not fixed on what her slender fingers were about.
She drew from the parcel a flat morocco case with a coat of arms and crest stamped on it in gold, black, and scarlet.
For a few moments she stared at the object stupidly. The next moment she heard Stormont"s spurred tread on the stairs; and she thrust the morocco case and the wrapping under the pillows behind her.