Next day Mrs. Montmorency’s party drove to Paradise. There were wonderful beech woods in which to walk. Paul met them there. His first look was for Launa; she was standing talking to two men, and he joined them and waited with patience, until at last he asked her to go for a walk.
“No, thank you,” she said. “I am too tired to walk.”
“I want to show you the trees. Come into the wood and sit down, you can rest there.”
She looked at him with an involuntary air of appeal. She was not afraid of him, she assured herself, only afraid of herself. Some day he might tell her things, ask her questions, and she, through weakmindedness, might answer. They started to walk, and she still meditated. Why should she think he cared for her? Ah yes, and why did she want him to care? These questions opened an endless vista of ideas and feelings before her. She felt indifferent for the moment, as no doubt he did.
“The view is lovely,” she exclaimed at last. “Let us go to the village.”
“What are you thinking about?” he asked, coming nearer and looking at her.
“Of many things. I think in heaven I should miss the sweetness of the air which is here.”
They walked down the road past a cluster of Indian cottages. A young squaw with a baby in her arms sat in front of one of them. Launa looked at her and at the child; its hair was more curly, and not quite so black as the long, straight locks of Indian children.
She looked at her companion. He was digging with his stick in the red clay of the road; his eyes were hidden; a red flush mounted to his forehead, and he was singularly embarrassed. She turned away and walked slowly on, followed by him in silence.
They heard a sound like a moan quite near them, and it grew louder; something—some animal—was suffering intensely.
In a ditch by the roadside lay a horse, thin, so thin that his bones seemed as if they would come through his skin. A few children clustered round, throwing stones at it at intervals and poking it with sticks. Blood slowly oozed from a wound in its head, and its poor body was covered with sores.
“Do something,” she said, and her voice quivered with the horror of it. “Can’t we put it out of its misery? Whose horse is it?”
Paul had driven away the children, and gone close to it.