Part 33 (1/2)
Sylvia was sitting in the parlor beside a window that looked out upon a vast range of snow-covered mountains, rising like the serrated teeth of a saw, and, although she heard his footsteps, she did not turn her face until Harley stood beside her. Then she said, irrelevantly:
”Isn't that a grand view!”
”You did not send for me to tell me that,” said Harley, with a certain protecting tenderness in his tone, because what he took to be the sadness in her face appealed to his manly qualities.
”No, I did not. I have been thinking over what we said to each other when we were coming back from Crow's Wing, and I have concluded that it was wrong.”
”Why was it wrong? I love you, and I had the right to tell you so.”
”No, you did not. You would have had were I free, but I am promised to another. I was wrong to let you speak; I was wrong to listen to you.”
”I will not admit it,” said Harley, doggedly, ”because Mr. Plummer is going to give you up. He will see that he ought not to hold you to this promise.”
She smiled sadly.
”I must be loyal to him,” she said, ”and before starting for Salt Lake City I want to tell you that you must not again speak to me of this.”
”But I shall write to you in Salt Lake.”
”You must not write of this. If you do, I will not open another one of your letters.”
”I promise not to write to you of love, but I make no promise after that. You are not going from Salt Lake to Idaho? This is not an excuse to leave us for good?”
Her eyes wavered before his. It may be that she had intended to abandon the campaign permanently, but, with his straight and masterful glance demanding an honest answer, she could not say it.
”Yes, I will come back,” she said, and then, with a sudden burst of feeling: ”Oh, I like your group; I like all of you. This great journey has been something fresh and wonderful to me, and I do not want to leave it!”
”I thought not,” said Harley, with returning confidence, ”and I am glad that you sent for me here, because it has given me a chance to tell you that, while you mean to keep your promise, I also mean to keep mine.
Mr. Plummer will yet yield you up. You are mine, not his, you know you are!”
He bent suddenly and kissed her lightly on the forehead, and every nerve in her tingled at the first touch of the lips of the man whom she loved.
Yet with the sense of right, of loyalty to another, strong within her, she was about to protest, but he was gone, and the first kiss still tingled on her forehead. She felt as if he had put there an invisible seal, and that now in very truth she belonged to him.
The two ladies under the escort of Mr. Plummer left an hour later for Salt Lake City, and everybody was at the station to see them go. Mrs.
Grayson was quiet as usual, and Sylvia was noticeably subdued, a fact which most of them ascribed to the tragedy of Flying Cloud and her coming absence of two weeks from a most interesting campaign.
”You ought to cheer up, Miss Sylvia,” said Hobart, ”because you are not half as unlucky as we are. You can spare us much more easily than we can spare you.”
”I am really sorry that I must go,” she said, sincerely.
”But you will come back to us?”
”I have promised to do so.”
”That is enough; we know that you will keep a promise, Miss Sylvia.”
Sylvia at first would not look at Harley. His kiss still burned upon her brow, and she yet felt that it was his seal, his claim upon her. And her conscience hurt her for it, because there was ”King” Plummer, strong, protecting, and overflowing with love for her and faith in her. But as she was telling them all good-bye she was forced to say it to Harley, too, in his turn, and when he took her hand he pressed it ever so little, and said, for her ear only: