He glanced round placidly. "It's a right public place here, but--"

"Don't be afraid. I'm not going to." And before she disappeared within the portals of the department store she gave him one last thrust. "It's not so public up in the library. Perhaps if you happen to be going that way?"

She left her communication a fragment, but he thought it worth acting upon. Among the library shelves he found Laska deep in a new volume on domestic science.

"This ain't any kind of day to be fooling away your time on cook-books.

Come out into the sun and live," he invited.

They walked past the gallows-frames and the slag-dumps and the shaft-houses into the brown hills beyond the point where green copper streaks showed and spurred the greed of man. It was a day of spring sunshine, the good old earth astir with her annual recreation. The roadside was busy with this serious affair of living. Ants and crawling things moved to and fro about their business. Squirrels raced across the road and stood up at a safe distance to gaze at these intruders.

Birds flashed back and forth, hurried little carpenters busy with the specifications for their new nests. Eager palpitating life was the key-note of the universe.

"Virginia told me about the Peltons," Laska said, after a pause.

"It's spreading almost as fast as if it were a secret," he smiled. "I'm expecting to find it in the paper when we get back."

"I'm so glad you did it."

"Well, you're to blame."

"I!" She looked at him in surprise.

"Partly. You told me how things were going with them. That seemed to put it up to me to give Pelton a chance."

"I certainly didn't mean it that way. I had no right to ask you to do anything about it."

"Mebbe it was the facts put it up to me. Anyhow, I felt responsible."

"Mr. Roper once told me that you always feel responsible when you hear anybody is in trouble," the young woman answered.

"Roper's a goat. n.o.body ever pays any attention to him."

Presently they diverged from the road and sat down on a great flat rock which dropped out from the hillside like a park seat. For he was still far from strong and needed frequent rests. Their talk was desultory, for they had reached that stage of friendship at which it is not necessary to bridge silence with idle small talk. Here, by some whim of fate, the word was spoken. He knew he loved her, but he had not meant to say it yet.

But when her steady gray eyes came back to his after a long stillness, the meeting brought him a strange feeling that forced his hand.

"I love you, Laska. Will you be my wife?" he asked quietly.

"Yes, Sam," she answered directly. That was all. It was settled with a word. There in the sunshine he kissed her and sealed the compact, and afterward, when the sun was low among the hill spurs, they went back happily to take up again the work that awaited them.

CHAPTER 25. FRIENDLY ENEMIES

Ridgway had promised Aline that he would see her soon, and when he found himself in New York he called at the big house on Fifth Avenue, which had for so long been identified as the home of Simon Harley. It bore his impress stamped on it. Its austerity suggested the Puritan rather than the cla.s.sic conception of simplicity. The immense rooms were as chill as dungeons, and the forlorn little figure in black, lost in the loneliness of their bleakness, wandered to and fro among her retinue of servants like a b.u.t.terfly beating its wings against a pane of gla.s.s.

With both hands extended she ran forward to meet her guest.

"I'm so glad, so glad, so glad to see you."

The joy-note in her voice was irrepressible. She had been alone for weeks with the conventional gloom that made an obsession of the shadow of death which enveloped the house. All voices and footsteps had been subdued to harmonize with the grief of the mistress of this mausoleum.

Now she heard the sharp tread of this man unafraid, and saw the alert vitality of his confident bearing. It was like a breath of the hills to a parched traveler.

"I told you I would come."

"Yes. I've been looking for you every day. I've checked each one off on my calendar. It's been three weeks and five days since I saw you."

"I thought it was a year," he laughed, and the sound of his uncurbed voice rang strangely in this room given to murmurs.

"Tell me about everything. How is Virginia, and Mrs. Mott, and Mr.

Yesler? And is he really engaged to that sweet little school-teacher?

And how does Mr. Hobart like being senator?"

"Not more than a dozen questions permitted at a time. Begin again, please."

"First, then, when did you reach the city?"

He consulted his watch. "Just two hours and twenty-seven minutes ago."

"And how long are you going to stay?"

"That depends."

"On what?"

"For one thing, on whether you treat me well," he smiled.

"Oh, I'll treat you well. I never was so glad to see a real live somebody in my life. It's been pretty bad here." She gave a dreary little smile as she glanced around at the funereal air of the place.

"Do you know, I don't think we think of death in the right way? Or, maybe, I'm a heathen and haven't the proper feelings."

She had sat down on one of the stiff divans, and Ridgway found a place beside her.

"Suppose you tell me about it," he suggested.

"I know I must be wrong, and you'll be shocked when you hear."

"Very likely."

"I can't help feeling that the living have rights, too," she began dubiously. "If they would let me alone I could be sorry in my own way, but I don't see why I have to make a parade of grief. It seems to--to cheapen one's feelings, you know."

He nodded. "Just as if you had to measure your friendship for the dead with a yardstick of Mother Grundy. It's a hideous imposition laid on us by custom, one of Ibsen's ghosts."

"It's so good to hear you say that. And do you think I may begin to be happy again?"

"I think it would be allowable to start with one smile a day, say, and gradually increase the dose," he jested. "In the course of a week, if it seems to agree with you, try a laugh."

She made the experiment without waiting the week, amused at his whimsical way of putting it. Nevertheless, the sound of her own laughter gave her a little shock.

"You came on business, I suppose?" she said presently.