It was hopelessly burned; some of it was even charred on the bottom of the pan.  Sally, returning on the run, took charge of the cookery and went about it with a speed and ability that kept him silent; which being the ideal mood for a spectator, he watched and found himself learning much.

Whatever that scene of the night before meant in the small and definite, in the large and vague it meant that he had a claim of some sort on Sally Fortune and it is only when a man feels that he has this claim, this proprietorship, as it were, that he begins to see a woman clearly.

Before this his observance has been half blind through prejudice either for or against; he either sees her magnified with adulation, or else the large end of the glass is placed against his eye and she is merely a speck in the distance.  But let a woman step past that mysterious wall which separates the formal from the intimate—­only one step—­at once she is surrounded by the eyes of a man as if by a thousand spies.  So it was with Anthony.

It moved him, for instance, to see the supple strength of her fingers when she was scraping the charred bacon from the bottom of the pan, and he was particularly fascinated by the undulations of the small, round wrist.  He glanced down to his own hand, broad and bony in comparison.

It was his absorption in this criticism that served to keep him aloof from her while they ate, and the girl felt it like an arm pushing her away.  She had been very close to him not many hours before; now she was far away.  She could understand nothing but the pain of it.

As he finished his coffee he said, staring into a corner:  “I don’t know why I came back to you, Sally.”

“You didn’t mean to come back when you started?”

“Of course not.”

She flushed, and her heart beat loudly to hear his weakness.  He was keeping nothing from her; he was thinking aloud; she felt that the bars between them were down again.

“In the first place I went because I had to be seen and known by name in some place far away from you.  That was for your sake.  In the second place I had to be alone for the work that lay ahead.”

“Drew?”

“Yes.  It all worked like a charm.  I went to the house of Jerry Wood, told him my name, stayed there until Conklin and several others arrived, hunting for me, and then gave them the slip.”

She did not look up from her occupation, which was the skilful cleaning of her gun.

“It was perfect; the way clear before me; I had dodged through their lines, so to speak, when I gave Conklin the slip, and I could ride straight for Drew and catch him unprepared.  Isn’t that clear?”

“But you didn’t?”

She was so calm about it that he grew a little angry; she would not look up from the cleaning of the gun.

“That’s the devil of it; I couldn’t stay away.  I had to come back to you.”

She restored the gun to her holster and looked steadily at him; he felt a certain shock in countering her glance.