With that he was gone, leading her borrowed horse back to town at her request. From a point half a mile distant he looked back. She was still in the doorway and when he halted his pony he saw a flicker of white as she waved a handkerchief at him. He lifted his hat in salute; then rode on, with a heart that was heavy and cold.
"Th' finest woman that God ever gave a body," he said, "an' I've given her over to th' only man that walks th' earth who wouldn't try to appreciate her!"
Ann watched him go, an apprehensive mood coming upon her. He shacked off on the pinto horse while Abe, left alone in the corral, trotted about and nickered and pawed to show his displeasure at being left behind. For a long time the girl stood there, not moving, breathing slowly; then she looked about her, turned and walked into Bruce's room, roamed around, examining the books, the pictures, the furniture, touching things with her finger tips gently, lovingly, hearing his voice again as it told her of them. For her each article in that room now held a particular interest. She stared at the photograph of the girl he had selected as a sister, at Whistler's fine, capped old lady, opened the "French Revolution" and riffled the leaves he had thumbed and soiled and torn, and laughed deep in her throat as she saw the curtains hanging irregularly from their six-penny nails ... laughed, though her eyes were damp.
A step sounded in the kitchen and the woman became rigid as she listened.
Just the one word of the muttered sentence was distinguishable, but she knew it was not Bayard's voice; knew, then, whose it must be.
Very quietly she walked to the doorway of the bedroom and stood there. Ned Lytton had halted a step from the kitchen entry and was wiping his face with a black silk kerchief. He completed the operation, removed his hat, tossed it to a chair, unbuttoned the neck of his shirt ... and ceased all movements.
For each the wordless, soundless period that followed seemed to be an age. The woman looked at the man with a slight feeling of giddiness, a sensation that was at once relief and horror, for he was as her worst fears would have it; his face, in spite of his weeks of good living, was the color of suet, purple sacks under the eyes, lips hard and cruel, and from chin to brow were the indelible marks of wasting, of debauchery.