Oh, why had she come into his life at all! She had given him the taste for knowledge, for better things of all sorts; and now she was going away, going away forever. He had no illusions about her ever returning. Not she, once she had escaped from a life she hated. Had she not just said as much when she said that the shack had seemed like a prison to her?
And now, in place of going on in the old way that had always seemed good enough to him before he knew anything better, mulling about, getting his own meals, with only one thought, one ambition in the world--the success of his crops and the acquisition of more land that he might some day in the dim future have a few thousands laid by--he would always be wanting something he could never get without her: more knowledge of the things that made life fuller and wider and broader, the things that she prized and had known from her childhood.
It was cruel and unfair of her to have awakened the desire in him only to abandon him. To have held the cup of knowledge to his lips for one brief instant and then leave him to go through life with his thirst unslaked! Not that she was intentionally cruel. No, he thought he knew all of her little faults of temper and of pride by this. Her heart was too kindly to let her wound him knowingly, witness her tenderness to poor Mrs. Sharp only this afternoon. But it hurt, none the less. She had said that she had not known he wanted love. How should she have guessed it?
But the real thing that tortured him most was the fact that he wanted her, her, her. She had been his, his woman. No other woman in this broad earth could take her place.
"You'll think of me sometimes, my girl, won't you?" he said huskily.
"I don't suppose I shall be able to help it." She smiled at him over her shoulder, as she crossed the room to restore her basket to its place.
"I was an ignorant, uneducated man. I didn't know how to treat you properly. I wanted to make you happy, but I didn't seem to know just how to do it."
"You've never been unkind to me, Frank. You've been very patient with me!"
"I guess you'll be happier away from me, though. And I'll be able to think that you're warm and comfortable and at home, and that you've plenty to eat."