She leaned her soft cheek upon his shoulder, caressing his forehead with her hand. Barrett caught the fluttering tempter, and held it imprisoned against his breast, as if to put in it the key to all his heart's secrets and treasured hopes. But he remained silent. And she:
"What did he say, Edgar? Won't you tell me, dear?"
Barrett drew a long breath, as a man breathes before he dashes into a fire, or when he poises himself to dive from a great and dangerous height.
"He tried to speak; he muttered something," he said.
"I know, I know"—eagerly—"but what did he say?"
Barrett raised her head, his hand on the rich treasure of her dark red hair. A moment he gazed gravely into her eyes, putting back the hair from her forehead and holding it so, hard under his hand, as if not willing that one tiny strand or blowing stress should intervene.
"No man will ever know," he said, with a gravity and depth of earnestness that shook her to the soul.
She bowed her head as if under a rebuke, and remained so, silent and humbled from her warm beguilement, at his side.
There was the whisper of falling leaves around them, and the sun was red through the blue curtain that softened the crags and riven pines of the far hills into romance, and made them holy as an altar clouded in incense where men bow down to pray.
Out of the bunkhouse there came a sound as of a bee
