"No," she said, "not here. Good-night, Bob; give my love to your sweetheart."
He went out slowly, and back to his hut. He could not understand how he had offended the girl--what made her treat him so. It never crossed his mind that it might simply be wilfulness. Once or twice he sang his little love song over to himself; then he closed his eyes, folded his arms as they had been folded when he held the girl he loved in them, and tried to think she was there still.
About midnight Steve came in. Bob opened his eyes and looked at him. Something about his footstep had struck him as unusual; generally it was light, now it dragged; his face, too, was colourless, and in his boyish eyes there were tears.
"Anything wrong, Steve?" he asked, laying his great hand upon his partner's shoulder with a touch gentle as a woman's.
"She won't have me," he said. "I asked her to-night; she had been so kind, singing with me, walking a little way with me; I thought it meant that I might speak. She must have known that I loved her."
"Try again; perhaps she wants you to try again."
"No, she says her heart is not her's to give."
Bob went cold, and pale too. He wondered who it could be that she loved; there was none worthier than Steve.
"If it had been you," Steve went on, "I could have borne it; but see how she treated you to-night. I shall go away from here, Bob."
It was little they slept that night, and before the next evening everyone knew that Singing Bob and Lily Steve were going away from the camp. Perhaps, too, they half guessed the cause.
[Illustration: "MARIPOSAS ENTERED THE HUT."]
They had done very well, and their claim sold for a fair price. They would take quite enough away to start in some new way.
It was the night before they had settled to leave: Steve had gone up to the Paradise to say good-bye to Mariposas. Bob said he couldn't and wouldn't, but sent a message by his friend. He was sitting alone, half wishing that he had gone just to see her face and hear her voice once more, when someone lifted the latch of his door, and the subject of his thoughts entered the hut.
He rose quickly, then stood still, not knowing what to do; she broke the silence.
"So you were going without bidding me good-bye?" she said.