"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 passionless 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.