“I think I could never part with them,” she assured him. “I did not know how much I could learn to love the woods and the cabin and the mountains.”
He sat for a little while, looking across to where the shadows of clouds moved, one by one, across the dark slopes of the range opposite.
“They are friendly things, these mountains,” he observed. “They stand by you when you are in trouble, somehow, they are so big and calm and untroubled themselves.”
Their friendship and confidence had brought them so close together that Beatrice felt suddenly the thrill of a bold impulse. She cast aside Dr. Minturn’s advice to let John Herrick make the first move toward reconciliation. It did not occur to her that the man beside her might be talking so freely only because he meant so soon to close his friendship to her forever. She reflected only on how triumphant she would be when her management had brought the whole misunderstanding to a happy end. Yet she did not dare speak out at once.
“Only think,” she began suddenly, “that you and I might be lunching at—at the Manhattan together if things had been a little different.”
“Yes.” She was greatly encouraged by his immediate assent. He looked at his gray flannel shirt and at her patched riding skirt and went on. “We wouldn’t be dressed just as we are now, would we? And there would be music, instead of the sound of a stream, and a hundred voices talking all at once, instead of those two magpies chattering in the thicket. The fat lady at the next table—there always is one—might be wearing a beaver scarf made from the jacket of some furry little fellow that swam in that very pool below us, and the waiter might tell us that there was an unusual delicacy to-day—rainbow trout.”
She leaned forward, feeling bolder still.
“You haven’t forgotten,” she said, “and you will be coming back to it all some day. We know who you are. We want so much to have you belong to us again. Aren’t you coming back?”
He stood up suddenly and faced her. In that instant she knew that she had done wrong. The shadow of unforgettable pain swept over his face and the laughter died in his eyes.
She did not trust herself to speak or even to look at him. Mutely she nodded keeping her wide, unseeing eyes on the fire, clenching her hands, holding her breath and waiting. There was a long, long pause.