The blue-gray eyes were downcast.

“I don’t know.  Having asked so much, and accepted so much from him—­it shall be as he says, mother.”

The afternoon had been all that a summer afternoon on the brown highlands can be, and the powerful touring car had swept them from mile to mile over the dun hills like an earth-skimming dragon whose wing-beat was the muffled, explosive thud of the motor.

Through most of the miles Elinor had given herself up to silent enjoyment of the rapture of swift motion, and Ormsby had respected her mood, as he always did.  But when they were on the high hills beyond the mining-camp of Megilp, and he had thrown the engines out of gear to brake the car gently down the long inclines, there was room for speech.

“This is our last spin together on the high plains, I suppose,” he said.  “Your mother has fixed upon to-morrow for our return to town, hasn’t she?”

Elinor confirmed it half-absently.  She had been keyed up to face the inevitable in this drive with Ormsby, and she was afraid now that he was going to break her resolution by a dip into the commonplaces.

“Are you glad or sorry?” he asked.

Her reply was evasive.

“I have enjoyed the thin, clean air and the freedom of the wide horizons.  Who could help it?”

“But you have not been entirely happy?”

It was on her lips to say some conventional thing about the constant jarring note in all human happiness, but she changed it to a simple “No.”

“May I try if I can give the reason?”

She made a reluctant little gesture of assent; some such signal of acquiescence as Marie Antoinette may have given the waiting headsman.

“You have been afraid every day lest I should begin a second time to press you for an answer, haven’t you?”

She could not thrust and parry with him.  They were past all that.

“Yes,” she admitted briefly.

“You break my heart, Elinor,” he said, after a long pause.  “But”—­with a sudden tightening of the lips—­“I’m not going to break yours.”

She understood him, and her eyes filled quickly with the swift shock of gratitude.

“If you had made a study of womankind through ten lifetimes instead of a part of one, you could not know when and how to strike truer and deeper,” she said; and then, softly:  “Why can’t you make me love you, Brookes?”

He took his foot from the brake-pedal, and for ten seconds the released car shot down the slope unhindered.  Then he checked the speed and answered her.

“A little while ago I should have said I didn’t know; but now I do know.  It is because you love David Kent:  you loved him before I had my chance.”

She did not deny the principal fact, but she gave him his opportunity to set it aside if he could—­and would.

“Call it foolish, romantic sentiment, if you like.  Is there no way to shame me out of it?”