The blood swept into the girl's face. For the moment she forgot Gregory, and was only conscious of an unreasoning impulse which prompted her to take the hands held out to her. Then she rose and faced the man, with burning cheeks.

"You know nothing of me," she said. "Can you think that I would let you take me--out of charity?"

"Again you're wrong--on both points. As I once told you, I have sat for hours beside the fire beneath the pines or among the boulders with your picture for company. When I was worn-out and despondent you encouraged me. You have been with me high up in the snow on the ranges, and through leagues of shadowy bush. That is not all, however, though it's difficult to speak of such things to you. There were times when as we drove the branch line up the gorge beneath the big divide, all one's physical nature shrank from the monotony of brutal labour.

The pay-days came round, and opportunities were made for us--to forget what we had borne, and had still to bear, in the snow and the icy water. Then you laid a restraining hand on me. I could not take your picture where you could not go. Is all that to count for nothing?"

Then he spread his hands out forcibly. "As to the other question: can't you get beyond the narrow point of view? We're in a big, new country where the old barriers are down. We're merely flesh and blood--red blood--and we speak as we feel. Admitting that I was sorry for you--I am--how does that tell against me--or you? There's one thing only that counts at all: I want you."

Agatha was stirred, and almost dismayed at the effect his words had on her. He had spoken with a force and pa.s.sion that had nearly swept her away with it. The vigour of the new land throbbed in his voice, and, flinging aside all cramping restraints and conventions, he had, as he had said, claimed her as flesh and blood. There was no doubt that her nature responded, and it was significant that Gregory had faded altogether out of her mind; but there was, after all, pride in her, and she could not quite bring herself to look at things from his standpoint. All her prejudices and her sense of fitness were opposed to it. For one thing, he had taken the wrong way when he had admitted that he was sorry for her. She did not want his compa.s.sion, and she shrank from the shadow of the thought that she would marry him--for shelter. It brought her a sudden, shameful confusion as she remembered the haste with which marriages were, it seemed, arranged on the prairie. Then, as the first unreasoning impulse which had almost compelled her to yield to him pa.s.sed away, she remembered that it was scarcely two months since she had met him in England. It was intolerable that he should think she would be willing to fall into his arms merely because he had held them out to her.

"It's a little difficult to get beyond one's sense of what is fit," she said. "You--I must say it again--can't know anything about me. You have woven fancies about that photograph, but you must recognise that I'm not the girl you have, it seems, created out of them. In all probability she's wholly unreal, unnatural, visionary." She contrived to smile, for she was recovering her composure. "Perhaps it's easy when one has imagination to endow a person with qualities and graces that could never belong to them. It must be easy"--and though she was unconscious of it, there was a trace of bitterness in her voice--"because I know I could do it myself."

Again the man held his hands out. "Then," he said simply, "won't you try? If you can only feel sure that the person has them it's possible that he could acquire one or two."

Agatha drew back, disregarding this. "Then I've changed ever so much since that photograph was taken."

Wyllard admitted it. "Yes," he said, "I recognised that; you were a little immature then. I know that now--but all the graciousness and sweetness in you has grown and ripened. What is more, it has grown just as I seemed to know it would do. I saw that clearly the day we met beside the stepping-stones. I would have asked you to marry me in England only Gregory stood in the way."

Then the colour ebbed suddenly out of the girl's face as she remembered.

"Gregory," she said in a strained voice, "stands in the way still. I didn't send him away altogether. I'm not sure I made that clear."

Wyllard started, but he stood very still again for a moment or two.

"I wonder," he said, "if there's anything significant in the fact that you gave me that reason last? He failed you in some way?"

"I'm not sure that I haven't failed him; but I can't go into that."

Again Wyllard stood silent awhile. Then he turned to her with the signs of a strong restraint in his face.

"Gregory," he said, "is a friend of mine; there is, at least, one very good reason why I should remember it, but it seems that somehow he hadn't the wit to keep you. Well, I can only wait in the meanwhile, but when the time seems ripe I shall ask you again. Until then you have my promise that I will not say another word that could distress you. Perhaps I had better take you back to Mrs. Hastings now."

Agatha turned away, and they walked back together silently through the bluff.

CHAPTER XIII.

THE SUMMONS.

Mrs. Hastings was standing beside her waggon in the gathering dusk when Agatha and Wyllard joined her, and when the latter had helped them up she looked down at him severely as she gathered up the reins.

"By this time Allen will have had to put the kiddies to bed," she said.

"Christina, as you might have borne in mind, goes over to Branstock's every evening. Anyway, you'll drive across and see him about that team as soon as you can; come to supper."

"I'll try," said Wyllard with a certain hesitation; and Mrs. Hastings turned to her companion as they drove away.

"Why did he look at you before he answered me?" she asked, and laughed, for there was just light enough left to show the colour in Agatha's cheek. "Well," she added, "I told Allen he was sure to be the first."

Agatha looked at her in evident bewilderment, but she nodded. "Yes,"

she said, "of course, I knew it would come. Everybody knows by now that you have fallen out with Gregory."

"But, as I told you, I haven't fallen out with him."

"Then you certainly haven't married him, and if you have said 'No' to Harry Wyllard because you would sooner take Gregory after all, you're a singularly unwise young woman. Anyway, you'll have to meet him when he comes to supper. Allen's fond of a talk with Harry; I can't have him kept away."

"I was a little afraid of that," said Agatha quietly. "What makes the situation more difficult is that he told me he would ask me again."

Mrs. Hastings appeared thoughtful. "In that case he will in all probability do it; but I don't think you need feel diffident about meeting him, especially as you can't help it. He'll wait and say nothing until he considers it advisable."

She changed the subject, and talked about other matters until they reached the homestead; but as the weeks went by Agatha found that what she had told her was warranted.

Wyllard drove over every now and then, but she was rea.s.sured by his att.i.tude. He greeted her with the quiet cordiality which had hitherto characterised him, and it went a long way towards allaying the embarra.s.sment she was conscious of at first. By and bye, however, she felt no embarra.s.sment at all, in spite of the disturbing possibility that he might at some future time once more adopt the role of lover.

In the meanwhile, she realised that in face of the efforts she made to think of him tenderly she was drifting further apart from Gregory; and she had, as it happened, two further offers of marriage before the wheat had shot up a hand's breadth above the rich black loam. This was a matter of regret to her, and, though Mrs. Hastings a.s.sured her that the "boys" would get over it, she was rather shocked to hear that one of them had shortly afterwards involved himself in difficulties by creating a disturbance in Winnipeg.

The wheat, however, was growing tall when, at Mrs. Hastings's request, she drove over with her again to Willow Range. Wyllard was out when they reached it, and leaving Mrs. Hastings and his housekeeper together she wandered out into the open air. She went through the birch bluff and towards the sloo, which had almost dried up now, and it was with a curious stirring of confused feelings that she remembered what Wyllard had said to her there. Through them all there ran a regret that she had not met him four years earlier.

That, however, was a train of thought she did not care to indulge in, and in order to get rid of it she walked more briskly up a low rise where the gra.s.s was already turning white again, over the crest of it, and down the side of another hollow. The prairie rolled just there in wide undulations as the sea does when the swell of a distant gale under-runs a gla.s.sy calm. She had grown fond of the prairie, and its clear skies and fresh breezes had brought the colour to her cheeks and given her composure, though there were times when the knowledge that she was no nearer a decision in regard to Gregory weighed upon her like a chill depressing shadow. She had seen very little of him, and he had not been effusive then. What he felt she could not tell, but it had been a relief to her when he had ridden away again. Then for a while he faded to an unsubstantial, shadowy figure in the back of her mind.

That afternoon the prairie stretched away before her gleaming in the sunlight tinder a vast sweep of cloudless blue. She was half-way down the long slope when a clash and tinkle reached her, and for the first time she noticed that a cloud of dust hung about the hollow at the foot of it, where there had been another sloo. It had, however, evidently dried up weeks ago, and as there were men and horses moving amidst the dust she supposed that they were cutting prairie hay, which grows longer in such places than it does upon the levels. She went on another half-mile, and then sat down some distance off, for she had already walked further than she had intended. She could now see the men more clearly, and though it was fiercely hot they were evidently working at high pressure. Their blue duck clothing and bare brown arms appeared among the white and ochre tinting of the gra.s.s that seemed charged with brightness, and the sounds of their activity came up to her. She could distinguish the clashing tinkle of the mowers, the crackle of the harsh stems, and the rattle of waggon wheels.

By and bye a great mound of gleaming gra.s.s overhanging two half-seen horses moved out of the sloo, and she watched it draw nearer until she made out Wyllard sitting in a depression in the front of it. She sat still until he pulled the team up close beside her and looked down with a smile.

"It's 'most two miles to the homestead. If you could manage to climb up I could make you a comfortable place," he said.

Agatha held her hands up with one foot upon a spoke of the wheel as the man leaned down, and next moment she was strongly lifted and felt his supporting hand upon her waist. Then she found herself standing upon a narrow ledge clutching at the hay while he tore out several big armfuls of it and flung it back upon the rest.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "Agatha held her hands up ... as the man leaned down, and the next moment she was strongly lifted."]

"Now," he said, "I guess you'll find that a snug enough nest."

She sank into it with at least a certain sense of physical satisfaction. The gra.s.s was soft and warm, scented with the aromatic odours of wild peppermint, and it yielded like a downy cushion beneath her limbs. Still, she was just a little uneasy in mind, for she fancied she had seen a sudden sign of tension in the man's face when he had for a moment held her on the edge of the waggon. Un.o.btrusively she flashed a glance at him, and was rea.s.sured. He was looking straight before him with unwavering eyes, and his face was as quiet as it usually was again. Neither of them said anything until the team moved on. Then he turned to her.

"You won't get jolted much," he said. "They've been at it since four o'clock this morning."

"That," said Agatha, "must have meant that you rose at three."

Wyllard smiled. "As a matter of fact, it was half-past two. There was no dew last night, and we started early. I've several extra teams this year, and there's a good deal of hay to cut. Of course, we have to get it in the sloos or any damp place where it's long. We don't sow gra.s.s, and we have no meadows like those there are in England."

Agatha understood that he meant to talk about matters of no particular consequence, as he usually did. There was, as she had noticed, a vein of almost poetic imagination in this man, and his idea that she had been with him through the snow of the lonely ranges and the gloom of the great forests of the Pacific slope appealed to her, merely as a pretty fancy, in particular. He had, however, of late very seldom given it rein, and sitting close beside him among the yielding hay she decided that it was wiser to let him talk about his farm.

"But you have a foreman who could see the teams turned out, haven't you?" she said.

"I had, but he left me three or four days ago. It's a pity in several ways, since I've taken up rather more than I can handle this year."

"Then why didn't you keep him?"