There was a rumble of thunder far out on the western prairie. A cold
breath stole through the hot stillness, and an arm of vapor reached out
between the moon and the quiet earth. Darkness fell. The man and the girl
kept silence between them. They might have been two sad guardians of the
black little stream that splashed unseen at their feet. Now and then an
echo of far away lightning faintly illumined them with a green light.
Thunder rolled nearer, ominously; the gods were driving their chariots
over the bridge. The chill breath passed, leaving the air again to its hot
inertia.
"I did not want to go," she said, at last, with tears just below the
surface of her voice. "I wanted to stay here, but he--they wouldn't--I
can't."
"Wanted to stay here?" he said, huskily, not turning. "Here?"
"Yes."
"In Rouen, you mean?"
"In Plattville."
"In Plattville?" He turned now, astounded.
"Yes; wouldn't you have taken me on the 'Herald'?" She rose and came
toward him. "I could have supported myself here if you would--and I've
studied how newspapers are made; I know I could have earned a wage. We
could have made it a daily." He searched in vain for a trace of raillery
in her voice; there was none; she seemed to intend her words to be taken
literally.
"I don't understand," he said. "I don't know what you mean."
"I mean that I want to stay here; that I ought to stay here; that my
conscience tells me I should--but I can't and it makes me very unhappy.
That was why I acted so badly."
"Your conscience!" he cried.
"Oh, I know what a jumble and puzzle it must seem to you."
"I only know one thing; that you are going away to-morrow morning, and
that I shall never see you again."
The darkness had grown heavy. They could not see each other; but a wan
glimmer gave him a fleeting, misty view of her; she stood half-turned away
from him, her hand to her cheek in the uncertain fashion of his great
moment of the afternoon; her eyes-he saw in the flying picture that he
caught--were adorably troubled and her hand trembled. She had been
irresistible in her gaiety; but now that a mysterious distress assailed
her, the reason for which he had no guess, she was so divinely pathetic;
and seemed such a rich and lovely and sad and happy thing to have come
into his life only to go out of it; and he was so full of the prophetic
sense of loss of her--it seemed so much like losing everything--that he
found too much to say to be able to say anything.
He tried to speak, and choked a little. A big drop of rain fell on his
bare head. Neither of them noticed the weather or cared for it. They stood
with the renewed blackness hanging like a thick drapery between them.