Page:Pan's Garden.djvu/544

 'I've always loved the Place. We've always been happy here together.' He whispered it, as though a terror was in him lest it should be overheard and⁠—contradicted.

Her answer flabbergasted him. Her intuitions were so uncannily direct and piercing.

'That's what I meant. You've been unkind. You've hurt it.'

'Mánya,' he repeated severely, 'you must not say such things. And you must not think them.'

'I'm so awfully sorry, Uncle Dick,' she said softly in the dark, and promptly kissed him. The kiss went like a stab into his heart.

Then she was gone again, and he caught her light footstep several yards in front, as though a shower of drops had fallen on the needles.

'Uncle,' came her voice again close beside him. She stood on tiptoe and pulled his ear down to the level of her lips. 'Hold my hand tight. We're coming near now.' She was curiously excited.

'To the Mill?' he asked, knowing quite well she meant another thing.

'No, to the pits the men dug,' she answered, nestling in against him, while his own voice echoed faintly, 'Yes, the sample pits.' He felt like passing the hostile outposts of the Camp who would shoot him but for the presence of the appointed escort.

A sigh of lonely wind went past them with its shower of drops. And these little hands of wind with their fingers of sweet rain helped forward his expulsion. The empty wilderness beyond lay waiting for his soul. It heard him coming.

And a curious, deep revelation of the child's state of mind then rushed suddenly upon him. He knew that she expected something. And her answer to