"You've been here while I've been passing through hell itself? You've known about me, known how I've suffered? Have you?"
"And you didn't come to me when I needed help most! You've not even taken the trouble to find out about me--"
"You're wrong there," Ann broke in simply. With the return of his old, petulant, irritating manner, the wistfulness slipped from her and a little show of independence, of resentment, came over the woman. "I have known about you; I've kept track of you; I've waited and prayed for the time when it would be best for me to see you...."
He folded his arms theatrically and swung one leg over the corner of the table. Ann stopped talking on that, for his attitude was one of open challenge.
"You've come out here to spy on me! Isn't that it? You've come to help me, you said, and yet you wouldn't even let me know you were here? Isn't it the same old game? Isn't it?"
"Isn't it a fact that you've been waiting to see what I'd do when I got well? I suppose you've come out here to-day with a prayer-book and a lot of soft words, a lot of cant, to try to reform me?" He thrust his face close to hers as he asked the last.
"Is this the way you're going to greet me?" she asked. "Haven't you anything but the same old suspicion, the same old denunciation for me?"
He looked away from her and shrugged his shoulders.
"How have you known about me when you haven't been to see me?" he asked, evasively.
He looked at her through a moment of silence, and she looked back as steadily, as intently as he.
"Bayard?" he asked. "Bayard? He's been telling you ... about me?"
"He's been as kind to me as he has to you, Ned,"--with a feeling of misgiving even as she uttered the words. "He has ... ridden to Yavapai many times just to tell me about you."
He looked at her again, and she saw the puzzlement in his face. He started as though to speak, checked himself and looked past her into Bayard's room.
"He's gone to town; he left a few moments after I came. He asked me to--"
"Yes,"--turning to look. "He told me to use it."
Her husband eyed her calculatingly and rested his weight on the table once more. It was as though he had settled some important question for himself.
"Why haven't you been out before, Ann?" he asked her, eyes holding on her face to detect its slightest change of expression.