Finally, however, Polly managed to smile and give a characteristic shrug over her own self-pity. There was nothing in the world so silly. Like the rest of us she knew this to be true, yet, like the rest of us, now and then even this famous, grown-up woman, who had most of the things that people would give worlds to possess, indulged in attacks of being sorry for herself. Moreover, the day before she had sent for her doctor and he had positively refused to consider her leaving Colorado for the present.

You may remember that Polly had a certain inherited delicacy that used to keep her mother uneasy, and lately it had troubled her. It was this fact she had concealed from her family and friends, so that now, though she was better, her physician had scouted the idea of a return East.

Once near New York he was sure she would begin to talk business with her theatrical manager, or even undertake to study a new play.

No, she must undoubtedly remain at her post a while longer. And yet was it really necessary to have her post quite so lonely?

Just as this idea occurred to her, a slight noise attracting her attention, Polly glanced down into the garden below her veranda.

There stood Bobbin and the next moment she had flung a poor little bouquet at her feet. It was a strange offering, all p.r.i.c.kly cactus leaves with a single white flower in their midst. For some absurd reason it flashed through Polly's mind to wonder if her offering could be in any way symbolic of the girl who had given it her. Could there be something beautiful hidden within the child's peculiarities?

For this was not the first token of affection that Bobbin had presented.

Indeed, many queer, small gifts had been brought to the strange lady since their first meeting, so that Polly had been curiously touched. For of course Bobbin's offerings came straight from her heart. In her pathetic, shut-in world she had no way of knowing anything of the history of the woman whom she so plainly admired.

Yet inside Polly O'Neill's sitting room at this moment there were four or five tokens of affection that must have come from her. They were too extraordinary for any one else to have sent them and had been laid at her shrine in too unusual a way. For most of them had been literally flung on her veranda. A few of them, when she happened to be sitting outdoors as she was doing at the present moment, and the others when no one had seen or known of their appearance.

One of the gifts was a beautiful blue feather that must have fallen from some unusual bird flying over the western lands, another a stone that shone like the finest crystal, in the sun, and a third a horseshoe some small broncho must have shed in trotting across the plains.

However, never once had Polly been able to thank her new friend for her gifts. For always at the slightest movement on her part Bobbin had turned and run away more fleetly than any one else could. For since Miss O'Neill's report that she had found the girl living with such rough people Bobbin had been recaptured and brought back to the village to school. Notwithstanding, she had once more escaped and now either no one knew just where she had gone or else no one had taken the trouble to capture her a second time.

It occurred to Polly at this moment that she would like to try and influence the girl, or at any rate show her grat.i.tude. Besides, anything would be better than spending the rest of the day bewailing her own loneliness. Moreover, it would do her good for a moment to compare her own loneliness with Bobbin's!

Without a movement or a sign to the girl to betray that she had even caught sight of her, Polly at once slipped into her bedroom and put on her coat and hat. And she was down in her yard and had stretched out her hand to touch her visitor before the girl became aware of her.

Yet the very next instant Bobbin started and began running as swiftly as she had at their first meeting. And this time, even more impetuously and with less reason, Miss O'Neill pursued her.

It was ridiculous of Polly and utterly undignified and unbecoming. No other person in the world in her position would have done such a thing.

Yet she had no more thought of its oddity and the attention that she might create than if she had been a Camp Fire girl in the New Hampshire woods nearly fifteen years before.

Of course the woman could not run half so fast as Bobbin in these days, but it was only because she was not well, Polly said to herself angrily.

She had been the swiftest runner of all the girls for short distances in their old Sunrise Hill Club. Of course Sylvia had used to get the better of her in long distance tests. Still, even now she was managing to keep Bobbin in sight, although she had a horrid st.i.tch in her side and was already out of breath.

Fortunately, however, for Miss Polly O'Neill's reputation she was not at the present time within the fashionable precincts of Colorado Springs, else she might possibly have been thought to have gone suddenly mad. Her hotel was some distance out in the country and there were but few houses in its neighborhood. Moreover, Bobbin was running away from the town and not toward it.

The road was a level, hard one, but all at once Polly felt a queer pain that took her breath completely away and then a sudden darkness.

She did not fall, however, because some one who was walking in the direction of her hotel reached her just in time.

Then to her amazement Polly heard an exclamation that had in some unexplainable way a familiar note in it. The next moment when straightening up and opening her eyes she seemed to be reposing in the arms of a tall man with dark eyes and gray hair, whom she had once known extremely well, but had not seen in the past five years.

CHAPTER XI

A MEETING AND AN EXPLANATION

"I--I was running," explained Miss O'Neill as soon as she had sufficient breath to speak.

Which was such an absurdly unnecessary statement of an apparent fact that her rescuer smiled against his will.

He was not pleased at this meeting with Miss Polly O'Neill. It was true that he had been walking out to her hotel to make inquiries concerning her health, but he had no thought or desire to see her. Indeed, deep down in his heart he believed that few women had ever treated a man much worse than she had treated him and he had never even tried to forgive her. For several years they had been engaged to be married, only postponing the wedding because of Polly's youth and because she wanted to go on with her acting for a few years longer without interruption.

Then when Richard Hunt had insisted that he was not young and could not wait forever, with characteristic coolness Polly had broken her engagement. She had written him of her change of mind and heart and he had accepted her letter as final. Never once since had they met face to face until this minute.

Yet now Richard Hunt found himself holding the same young woman in his arms, rather against his will, of course, but not knowing what else to do with her since she scarcely looked strong enough to stand alone.

"I think I would like to sit down for a moment," Polly volunteered finally and managed to cross over to the opposite side of the road, where she established herself very comfortably on a carefully cultivated mound of gra.s.s.

Her rescuer stood over her. "May I do anything for you, Miss O'Neill?"

he inquired formally. "I think it might be well for me to find your maid."

He was about to move off when Polly with her usual lack of dignity fairly clutched the back of his overcoat.

"Oh, please don't go, Mr. Hunt--Richard," she ended after a slight hesitation. "Really, I don't understand why you have treated me so unkindly all these years. I don't see the least reason why we should not have continued to be friends. Still, you were going to my hotel to call on me. There isn't any other possible reason why you were marching out this particular road, which does not lead anywhere else." And at this Miss O'Neill smiled with open and annoying satisfaction.

"I hadn't the faintest idea of asking to see you," Richard Hunt announced firmly, although a little surprised by Polly's friendly manner. If they had been parted for a matter of five weeks instead of five years, and if the cause of their separation had been only some slight disagreement rather than something affecting their whole lives, she could not have appeared more nonchalant and at the same time more cordial. But then there never had been any way of accounting for Polly O'Neill's actions and probably never would be. However, Richard Hunt had no desire again to subject himself to her moods. He wished very much to walk on, and yet he could not make up his mind to remove her hand forcibly from his coat. Moreover, she looked too pale and exhausted to be left alone. Yet this had always been a well-known method by which Polly had succeeded in gaining her own point, he remembered.

"Then what were you going to my hotel for? Didn't you even know I was staying there?" she demanded, finding breath enough to ask questions, in spite of her exhaustion of a few moments before.

If only he had been a less truthful man! For a moment Richard Hunt contemplated making up some entirely fanciful story, then he put the temptation aside.

Notwithstanding, his manner and answer were far more crushing to Miss Polly O'Neill than if he had told her a lie which she would probably have seen through at once.

Always he had commanded more respect from her than any man she had ever known in her life, which was secretly mingled with a little wholesome awe. Polly had always put it down to the fact that he was so much older than she was. But she had had other acquaintances among older men.

"You misunderstood me, Miss O'Neill, when I said that I was coming to your hotel without any intention of seeing you. That was true, but I was coming with the idea of inquiring how you were. You see, I also have been staying in this part of the country, and not long ago I read in one of the papers that you were here and seriously ill. Afterwards I learned that you were alone. Your family and friends have always been so kind to me that it appeared to me my duty to find out your true condition. I of course guessed that you had not told them the truth."

Richard Hunt gazed severely down at the crumpled young woman at his feet, ending his speech as cruelly as possible.

"Well, I like that!" Polly returned weakly, falling into slang with entire unconsciousness. "Here I have been suffering perfect agonies of loneliness and crying my eyes out every day because I so wanted mother and Mollie and Betty to come to me. And I only did not let them know I was ill, to keep them from worrying. Yet you make it sound just as if I were keeping my tiresome old breakdown a secret from the pure love of fibbing inherent in my wicked nature. I do think you are--mean!"

Was there ever such another grown-up woman as Polly O'Neill? Actually there were tears in her eyes as she ended her speech, relinquishing her hold on her companion in order to fish about in her pocket for a handkerchief, which she failed to find.

With entire gravity Mr. Hunt presented his, and Polly, wiping her eyes and perspiring forehead, coolly retained the handkerchief.

"Don't you think you are strong enough now to permit me to take you back to your hotel, if I may not look for your maid?" the man suggested, wondering if his companion had any idea of how absurd their position was, nor of how much he desired to get away from her.

However, she only sighed comfortably. "Oh, thank you very much, but don't trouble. I am perfectly all right now. I was only out of breath because I was running after a little girl who is as fleet as a deer. But I don't want to go back to my hotel unless you were coming to see me. I was much too lonely there. I'll just walk along with you and after a while, if I am tired again, perhaps we may find a bench and you'll sit down with me. Of course I know you are too dignified to sit on the gra.s.s like I am doing."

Without the least a.s.sistance Polly rose up and stood beside her companion, smiling at him somewhat wistfully.

What else could any man do except agree to her wishes? Besides, she had him cornered either way. For now if he continued his journey toward her hotel she would a.s.suredly accompany him, and she had also volunteered to walk the other way.

Moreover, it would seem too surly and disgruntled to refuse so simple a courtesy to an old acquaintance.

So Polly and her former friend walked slowly along in the brilliant Colorado sunshine in air so clear that it seemed almost dazzling. Beyond they could see the tops of snow-covered mountains tinted azure by the sky. It would have been humanly impossible to have felt unfriendly toward any human being in such circ.u.mstances and on such a day.

Every now and then Polly would glance surrept.i.tiously toward her companion's face. Gracious, he did look older! His hair was almost entirely gray and his expression certainly less kind. Polly wondered if he had really minded their broken engagement. Surely he had never cared seriously for so unreliable a person! She must have seemed only a foolish school girl to him, incapable of knowing her own mind. For of course if he had not felt in this way he would have made some effort to persuade her to change her decision. How often she used to lie awake wondering why he did not write or come to her? Well, he was probably grateful enough for his escape by this time.