Then he looked up and saw her, and she flushed at the swift elation in his face, which, however, almost immediately grew hard again. It was as though he had yielded for a moment to some pleasurable impulse, and had then, with an effort, repressed it and resumed his self-control.
"Come in," he invited, rising with outstretched hand, and she suddenly recalled how she had last crossed that threshold in his company. There had been careless laughter in his eyes then, he had moved and spoken with a joyous optimism, and now there was plain upon him the stamp of defeat. Even physically the man looked different.
She sat down when he drew her out a chair, but he remained standing, leaning with one hand on the table.
He looked at her with a hint of astonishment and something that suggested a natural curiosity as to the cause for the visit, which she now found it insuperably difficult to explain.
"You haven't been at work this evening?" she asked.
"No," replied Thorne. "I rode in to the railroad early yesterday and I've just got back after calling at two or three farms west of the creek. It seemed possible that I might be able to hire a couple of men I'd wired for back along the line, but I found that somebody else had got hold of them at another station. As a matter of fact, I had expected it."
"Then you must have made the journey almost without a rest!"
"Volador's dead played out," answered Thorne. "I had to do something, though it seemed pretty useless in any case."
"Ah!" Alison exclaimed softly; "then you mean to go on?"
"Until I'm turned out, which will no doubt happen very shortly."
He looked at her for a moment with his face awry and signs of a sternly repressed longing in his eyes.
"Yes," he answered, "it will hurt me more than anything I could have had to face. In fact, the thought of it has been almost unbearable; but it's now clear that I shall have to go through with it."
This was satisfactory to Alison in some respects, and she was quick to sympathize.
"It must be very hard to give up the farm on which you have spent so much earnest work."
"Yes," assented Thorne, with something in his tone that suggested half-contemptuous indifference to the sacrifice; "it won't be easy to give up even the farm."