He came down the road in a quarter of an hour with a huge rent in his
coat-sleeve and a small cut on his forehead. He was warm and
breathless, still righteously indignant at the event, and half-ashamed
of so degrading an encounter. He found the girl standing statue-like,
holding the bridle-rein, and looking into the distance with vacant eyes.
"Are you going back to Glenavelin, Miss Wishart?" he asked. "I think I
had better go with you if you will allow me."
Alice mutely assented and walked beside him while he led his horse. He
could think of nothing to say. The whole world lay between them now,
and there was no single word which either could speak without showing
some trace of the tragic separation.
It was the girl who first broke the silence.
"I want to thank you with all my heart," she stammered. And then by an
awkward intuition she looked in his face and saw written there all the
hopelessness and longing which he was striving to conceal. For one
moment she saw clearly, and then the crooked perplexities of the world
seemed to stare cruelly in her eyes. A sob caught her voice, and before
she was conscious of her action she laid a hand on Lewis's arm and burst
into tears.
The sight was so unexpected that it deprived him of all power of action.
Then came the fatally easy solution that it was but reaction of
over-strained nerves.
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