the clank of tightening chains came up sharply. Randal moved.
“Do I know what love is? Yes; I know. Though you were long years dead, and just dust blown along the hills, I would feel you pass by on the wind. I would love you then as now———”
She ruffled up his hair with both upstretched hands, and her eyes were laughing.
“And how do you love me now?” she said.
And then Randal cast the honour that he had been rivetting behind him for a space; and it broke, as it had broken many times before, to be patched again through bitter nights of wakefulness.
A wedge of swan passed dumbly overhead, black on the daffodil sky. Along the crystal of the snow-hills the sunset poured, red as strong wine. The sharpness of it was in the air, and in Randal’s heart. He heard Lou’s laugh below as the leading-chains fell; and the tramp of the horses turning homeward.
“I work for your father,” he said. “And I can’t look him in the face. I meet Murray and Ormond, and others who are no better than I—was. And I can’t look them in the face. For they know what I ought to be, and what I am. And do you think I don’t know what they would call me if they knew—this?”
His arms were very close round her, and she smiled at him wonderingly.
