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This made her laugh a little, and she got up and dried her eyes and sat before him like a humbled child. It was quite terrible for d.i.c.kie. His face was drawn with the discomfort of it. He moved about the room, miserable and restless.
Sheila recovered herself and looked up at him with a sort of wan resolution.
"And you will stay here and work the ranch and write, d.i.c.kie?"
"Yes, ma'am." He managed a smile. "If you think a fellow can push a plough and write poetry with the same hand."
"It's been done before. And--and you will send me back to Hilliard and--the good old world?"
d.i.c.kie's artificial smile left him. He stood, white and stiff, looking down at her. He tried to speak and put his hand to his throat.
"And I must leave you here," Sheila went on softly, "with my stars?"
She got up and walked over to the door and stood, half-turned from him, her fingers playing with the latch.
d.i.c.kie found part of his voice.
"What do you mean, Sheila, about your stars?"
"You told me," she said carefully, "that you would go and work and then come back--But, I suppose--"
That was as far as she got. d.i.c.kie flung himself across the room. A chair crashed. He had his arms about her. He was shaking. That pale and tender light was in his face. The whiteness of a full moon, the whiteness of a dawn seemed to fall over Sheila.
"He--he can give you everything--" d.i.c.kie said shakily.
"I've been waiting"--she said--"I didn't know it until lately. But I've been waiting, so long now, for--for--" She closed her eyes and lifted her soft sad mouth. It was no longer patient.
That night d.i.c.kie and Berg lay together on the hide before the fire, wrapped in a blanket. d.i.c.kie did not sleep. He looked through the uncurtained, horizontal window, at the stars.
"You've got everything else, Hilliard," he muttered. "You've got the whole world to play with. After all, it was your own choice. I told you how it was with me. I promised I'd play fair. I did play fair." He sighed deeply and turned with his head on his arm and looked toward the door of the inner room. "It's like sleeping just outside the gate of Heaven, Berg," he said. "I never thought I'd get as close as that--" He listened to the roar of Hidden Creek. "It won't be long, old fellow, before we take her down to Rusty and bring her back." Tears stood on d.i.c.kie's eye-lashes. "Then we'll walk straight into Heaven." He played with the dog's rough mane. "She'll keep on looking at the stars," he murmured.
"But I'll keep on looking at her--_Sheila_."
But Sheila, having made her choice, had shut her eyes to the world and to the stars and slept like a good and happy child.
