It was a one-tone landscape.  Sky, hills, barns, earth, all was a single mass of lifeless grey; in such an atmosphere old Homer had seen the wraiths of his dead heroes play again at the things they had done on earth.  She noted these things with a blank eye, for a thousand thoughts were leaping through her mind.  Something must be done.  There he lay in the same room with her.  He had turned his head back, no doubt, and was staring at the ceiling as before, and the yellow glimmer was in his eyes again.  Perhaps, after this day, she should never see him again; every moment was precious beyond the price of gold, and yet there she stood at the window, doing nothing.  But what could she do?

Should she go to him and fall on her knees beside him and pour out her heart, telling him again of the old days.  No, it would be like striking on a wooden bell; no echo would rise; and she knew beforehand the deadly blackness of his eyes.  So Black Bart lay often in the sun, staring at infinite distance and seeing nothing but his dreams of battle.  What were appeals and what were words to Black Bart?  What were they to Dan Barry?  Yet once, by sitting still—­the thought made her blood leap with a great, joyous pulse that set her cheeks tingling.

She waited till the first impulse of excitement had subsided, and then turned back and sat down in a chair near the fire.  From a corner of her eye she was aware that Whistling Dan had turned his head again to await her first speech.  Then she fixed her gaze on the wall of yellow flame.  The impulse to speak to him was like a hand tugging to turn her around, and the words came up and swelled in her throat, but still she would not stir.

In a moment of rationality she felt in an overwhelming wave of mental coldness the folly of her course, but she shut out the thought with a slight shudder.  Silence, to Dan Barry, had a louder voice and more meaning than any words.

Then she knew that he was sitting up on the couch.  Was he about to stand up and walk out of the room?  For moment after moment he did not stir; and at length she knew, with a breathless certainty, that he was staring fixedly at her!  The hand which was farthest from him, and hidden, she gripped hard upon the arm of the chair.  That was some comfort, some added strength.

She had now the same emotion she had had when Black Bart slunk towards her under the tree—­if a single perceptible tremor shook her, if she showed the slightest awareness of the subtle approach, she was undone.  It was only her apparent unconsciousness which could draw either the wolf-dog or the master.

She remembered what her father had told her of hunting young deer—­how he had lain in the grass and thrust up a leg above the grass in sight of the deer and how they would first run away but finally come back step by step, drawn by an invincible curiosity, until at length they were within range for a point blank shot.