Page:Lost Ecstasy (1927).pdf/369

 coiled ropes. They sat easily, swaying to the motion of their horses, one gloved hand resting easily on hip or thigh, and as they passed they picked out pretty girls among the crowd and smiled at them.

"Are you a real cowboy, mister?"

"Sure am, son."

She searched their faces, lean and tanned under their big hats, but Tom was not among them. How could he be?

When the parade had passed she went about her shopping methodically, but there was a strange leaven working in her. For the first time she looked back and saw the girl she had been when she ran away to Tom. Saw herself carried by a romantic impulse, swayed by the beating of drums, emotional, unstable, immature. Why had she married him? Because she loved him? Or because he was like those boys she had just watched, picturesque, and reckless? This last, perhaps, or so he must surely think, for when the lean days came, when he had been making his hard undramatic fight, she had abandoned him. What did it matter about Clare? What did it matter if he had kept his dogged silence all this time? She was the one who had failed, failed and run away, to live softly and at ease.

Then, if that were so!

She never knew just when she made her decision to go back. She was moving as automatically as had Tom on his search for Little Dog. She went to the railway ticket office, to the bank. She had plenty of money now, plenty for both of them, if he would only take her back. And he could not object to it; it was hers. Her mother had left it to her.

She was half feverish with excitement, her hands cold, her head hot. Impatient too, while her ticket was stamped, her reservations made. She would not even telegraph. She would go to Ursula and get a car there, and then

Suppose he did not want her? Suppose she got there to find that he had definitely put her out of his life? Suppose he opened the door of the house, and looked at her, as he could look, and she had to turn around and go away again?

Well, she could only try. It was her life, as well as his.