Page:Across the Stream.djvu/233

Rh all these years was empty. Just for one second that impression lasted, inscrutably frightening her, with some nightmare touch.

"Archie," she cried, "are you there? Is it you?" She heard a dreary little laugh for answer.

"Oh, I suppose so," he said. "I answer to my name, don't I?"

She longed, with a force of passion quite new to her, to be able to reach him in some way, to let her love be coined into the commoner metal of friendship, if only that could get to him, and give him the sense that he had something in his pocket worth having, even though it was not gold. She would have gleefully melted all her love into a currency that could have enriched him, for he did not want her love, and she had no other use for it except to help him in some way. And, as if to answer her yearning, he took her arm again, not angrily now, but with the quiet pressure of a man with a sympathetic friend.

"You're a good pal, Jessie," he said. "I'm awfully grateful to you. You won't play me false with your friendship, will you?"

"No, my dear," said she, stumbling a little on the words. "I'm—I'm not like that. The more you count on me the better I shall be pleased. I'm stupid at saying things, but, oh Archie, if a friend is any use to you, you've got one. And let me say, just once, how sorry I am for all this miserable business."

"Thanks, Jessie," said he.

They had turned back towards the house, and Jessie, unconscious of anything else except Archie, saw that they were already half across the lawn that lay dripping with dew. Her thin satin shoes were soaked, and the hem of her dress trailed on the grass. But she regarded that no more than she would have regarded it had she been walking in the dark with her lover.