He checked them with a growling rebuke.
Then very quietly he placed Sylvia's bridle in her hand, and put
her from him.
"Thank you," he said again. "But you mustn't be too generous at
the outset. I might begin to expect too much. And that would
be--silly of me, wouldn't it?"
There was no bitterness in voice or action, but there was
unmistakable irony. A curious sense of coldness came upon her, as
if out of the heart a distant storm-cloud an icy breath had reached
her.
She looked at him rather piteously. "You are not angry?" she said.
He leaned back in the saddle to knock a blood-sucking fly off his
horse's flank. Then he straightened himself and laughed.
"No, not in the least," he said.
She knew that he spoke the truth, yet her heart misgave her. There
was something baffling, something almost sinister to her, in the
very carelessness of his attitude. She turned her horse's head and
walked soberly away.
He did not immediately follow her, and after a few moments she
glanced back for him. He had dismounted and was scratching
something on the trunk of the blasted tree with a knife. The
withered arms stretched out above his head. They looked weirdly
human in the sunset glow. She wished he would not linger in that
eerie place.
She waited for him, and he came at length, riding with his head up
and a strange gleam of triumph in his eyes.
Pages:
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126