“Fay, don’t be distressed,” he said.  “I won’t do anything right away.  You can trust me.  I won’t be rash.  I’ll consult you before I make a move.  I haven’t any idea what I could do, anyway. . . .  You must bear up.  Why, it looks as if you’re sorry I found you.”

“Oh!  I’m glad!” she whispered.

“Then if you’re glad you mustn’t break down this way again.  Suppose some of the women happened to run into us.”

“I won’t again.  It’s only you—­you surprised me so.  I used to think how I’d like you to know—­I wasn’t really dead.  But now—­it’s different.  It hurts me here.  Yet I’m glad—­if my being alive makes you—­a little happier.”

Shefford felt that he had to go then.  He could not trust himself any further.

“Good night, Fay,” he said.

“Good night, John,” she whispered.  “I promise—­to be good to-morrow.”

She was crying softly when he left her.  Twice he turned to see the dim, white, slender form against the gloom of the cabin.  Then he went on under the pinyons, blindly down the path, with his heart as heavy as lead.  That night as he rolled in his blanket and stretched wearily he felt that he would never be able to sleep.  The wind in the cedars made him shiver.  The great stars seemed relentless, passionless, white eyes, mocking his little destiny and his pain.  The huge shadow of the mountain resembled the shadow of the insurmountable barrier between Fay and him.

. . . . . . . . . . .

Her pitiful, childish promise to be good was in his mind when he went to her home on the next night.  He wondered how she would be, and he realized a desperate need of self-control.

But that night Fay Larkin was a different girl.  In the dark, before she spoke, he felt a difference that afforded him surprise and relief.  He greeted her as usual.  And then it seemed, though not at all clearly, that he was listening to a girl, strangely and unconsciously glad to see him, who spoke with deeper note in her voice, who talked where always she had listened, whose sadness was there under an eagerness, a subdued gaiety as new to her, as sweet as it was bewildering.  And he responded with emotion, so that the hour passed swiftly, and he found himself back in camp, in a kind of dream, unable to remember much of what she had said, sure only of this strange sweetness suddenly come to her.

Upon the following night, however, he discovered what had wrought this singular change in Fay Larkin.  She loved him and she did not know it.  How passionately sweet and sad and painful was that realization for Shefford!  The hour spent with her then was only a moment.

He walked under the stars that night and they shed a glorious light upon him.  He tried to think, to plan, but the sweetness of remembered word or look made mental effort almost impossible.  He got as far as the thought that he would do well to drift, to wait till she learned she loved him, and then, perhaps, she could be persuaded to let him take her and Lassiter and Jane away together.