For a moment he let himself watch her, and catching his look, she smiled, as she had smiled when his eyes had met hers as he woke.
“Yi—eh! Yi—eh! Yi—e—h!” he suddenly shouted with the strength of his lungs.
The echo rolled back to them like a taunt.
“If they’re huntin’ us—” she said, trembling, “oh, they’ll hear that!”
He looked at her in horror. Fool! Would he never have done with his blundering....
“Oh, my God, I forgot,” he exclaimed, contritely, and dropped to the ground. “I don’t get _rested_ between kicking myself for being a damn fool,” he said.
While they ate, he was quiet. There was no way to let her know how much he hated himself, and his thought was occupied with nothing else. And it was as if she divined, for she became very gentle.
“I guess maybe you wanted to do somethin’ else to-day,” she said.
“It’s awful, me makin’ you do this,” she added. “Don’t you think I don’t know that.”
“I ain’t doin’ anything—what am I doin’?” he burst out.
“You’re takin’ me out of a good sight worse’n death,” she answered. “And don’t you think I’ll ever forget it.”
There was about her manner of saying this something infinitely alluring. She fell in a sudden breathlessness, and her voice had a tremor which seemed to lie in the very words themselves. And with this, and with what she said, the Inger found himself suddenly utterly unable to deal.
She said no more, and for a moment he was wretched again lest he had offended her. But the gentleness and softness of her manner reassured him. Moreover, he became conscious that of the cheese and bread she was leaving the greater part for him, and pretending to have finished.
After their lunch, a consuming content fell upon the man, and he lay stretched on his back, under the pine, staring upward, thinking of nothing. For a little she moved about, and then she came and sat beside him, saying nothing. More than he knew, this power of hers for silence conquered him. When a man knows how to live alone, he may or may not understand words, but he always understands silence.
Presently he looked over at her, and seeing that her eyes were heavy, he sat erect, with the memory of her night’s vigil.
She nodded. “I _could_,” she said. “I guess there ain’t the time,” she added.