"Good-by!" he answered gently, but without turning his head.
He heard the door opened and closed, very softly. After that he sat a long time in silence. Well, she was gone! It had been a trying afternoon, and he was glad to have it ended. And yet the room seemed to be extraordinarily empty, as it had never been before his illness. The stillness rather oppressed him. Damn it all, sickness did strange things to a man! Took a lot out of him! He straightened himself in his chair.
"Well, Jim!" said Haig. "Here we are again, eh? I'm hungry."
"You eat, she come back," Jim answered shrewdly.
Haig looked at him sharply, but the Chinaman's face was like a paper mask.
Hillyer was waiting for her at the barn when she came at last, with a smile that eased his anxiety, if only in an inconsiderable degree. But he saw, as he took her handbag and bundle, and placed them in the automobile, that she had been crying. This gladdened while it angered him, and he was lost among the many interpretations that might be put upon those signs of distress. Had she come to the end of her infatuation? Had she been subjected to insults as the reward of her service? He dared not ask her such questions--not yet; but he was resolved (and there were material reasons, too, for that decision) to have his own case settled, one way or another, at once.
Neither of them spoke more than a conventional word or two until Hillyer, after full speed down Haig's road to the junction, slowed up on the main highway along the Brightwater. It was the serenest of summer evenings, very still and fragrant, with a touch of autumn in the air. The eastern sky was filled with pale golds and pinks, and the foothills were warm with purples. Marion's face was averted from Hillyer, and her eyes were fixed, not on the soft alternations of color in the sky, but on Thunder Mountain, where the only clouds to be seen in all the expanse of blue lay low upon its uncompromising head.
She did not miss the note in his voice that exposed his intention, but long preparation for this moment enabled her to face him calmly.
"Yes, I know, Robert," she said. "You have much to say to me."
"I'm going to-morrow," he began abruptly. "Will you go with me?"