“D’you think that?” she said, and went directly through the door of the house.

He heard the crazy floor creak beneath her weight; the saddle dropped with a thump; a match scratched and a flight of shadows shook across the doorway.  The light did not serve to make the room visible; it fell wholly upon his own mind and troubled him like the waves which spread from the dropping of the smallest pebble and lap against the last shores of a pool.  Dumfounded by her casual surety, he remained another moment with the rein in the hollow of his arm.

Finally he decided to mount as silently as possible and ride off through the night away from her.  The consequences to her reputation if they spent the night so closely together was one reason; a more selfish and more moving one was the trouble which she gave him.  The finding and disposing of Drew should be the one thing to occupy his thoughts, but the laughter of the girl the moment before had suddenly obsessed him, wiped out the rest of the world, enmeshed them hopelessly together in the solemn net of the night, the silence.  He resented it; in a vague way he was angry with Sally Fortune.

His foot was in the stirrup when it occurred to him that no matter how softly he withdrew she would know and follow him.  It seemed to Anthony that for the first time in his life he was not alone.  In other days social bonds had fallen very lightly on him; the men he knew were acquaintances, not friends; the women had been merely border decorations, variations of light and shadow which never shone really deep into the stream of his existence; even his father had not been near him; but by the irresistible force of circumstances which he could not control, this girl was forced bodily upon his consciousness.

Now he heard a cheery, faint crackling from the house and a rosy glow pervaded the gloom beyond the doorway.  It brought home to Anthony the fact that he was tired; weariness went through all his limbs like the sound of music.  Music in fact, for the girl was singing softly—­to herself.

He took his foot from the stirrup, unsaddled, and carried the saddle into the room.  He found Sally crouched at the fire and piling bits of wood on the rising flame.  Her face was squinted to avoid the smoke, and she sheltered her eyes with one hand.  At his coming she smiled briefly up at him and turned immediately back to the fire.  The silence of that smile brought their comradeship sharply home to him.  It was as if she understood his weariness and knew that the fire was infinitely comforting.  Anthony frowned; he did not wish to be understood.  It was irritating—­indelicate.

He sat on one of the bunks, and when she took her place on the other he studied her covertly, with side glances, for he was beginning to feel strangely self-conscious.  It was the situation rather than the girl that gained upon him, but he felt shamed that he should be so uncertain of himself and so liable to expose some weakness before the girl.