Page:Lost Ecstasy (1927).pdf/53

 Ursula. Tom gazed at them thoughtfully, then suddenly laughed. She glanced at him.

"I was thinking about the night you folks came here. I sure was sore."

"What about?"

"I'd had some plans of my own," he said, eying her.

"What were you going to do?"

"Oh, I don't know. Play around some." And with a certain malice: "Maybe see a girl. You never can tell."

A burst of sudden and primitive jealousy sent the blood away from her face. Her lips stiffened.

"Was it a girl you were thinking of just now?"

"You'd like to know, wouldn't you!"

But she had herself in hand by that time.

"Not necessarily. You have your own life to live, as—I have mine."

She was not prepared for his answer, however, or for the steady direct gaze which accompanied it.

"Yes," he said. "That's the hell of it."

He turned his horse abruptly and started back, and their talk thereafter was of unimportant matters. But she knew, and knew that he knew, that the relationship between them had definitely changed with that declaration of his. And later in the evening Herbert knew it too, and took his walk so that he might be too tired to lie awake and think.

Kay had gone upstairs when he started, and Henry was about to follow her, yawning.

"Good night, Katherine."

"Good night, Henry. Be sure to raise your window."

Herbert picked up a cap and went out. Was that all it came to in the end? All this agony of spirit, and then perhaps—only perhaps—a brief interval of happiness and consummation, and after that nothing but habit and association? It could not be, it must not be. He straightened his young shoulders and started down the lane.

There was a full moon. When he reached the cottonwoods he turned around, and he was certain he saw Kay at her window. Over at the bunk house some one was indolently twanging a banjo, and in one of the cattle yards a cow