"
Senhouse pricked up his head. "Does he love you, do you suppose? Do you
believe it?"
She shrugged half-heartedly. "He says so. He seemed to when I told him
that I was going away.
"When was that?" he asked her. She told him the whole story as the reader
knows it. Senhouse heard her, his head between his hands.
At the end of it, he looked out over the valley.
"Would to God," he said, "you and I had never met, Sanchia."
Tears filled her eyes. "Oh, why do you say that?"
He took her hands. "You know why." There was no faltering in the look that
passed between them now. They were face to face indeed. He got up, and
stood apart from her. She waited miserably where she was.
"We may be friends now, I believe," he said. You'll let me write to you?
You'll trust me?"
"I shall live in your letters," she said. "I read nothing else but those I
have. They are all the help I have." Then with a cry she broke out, "Oh,
Jack, what a mess you've made of our affairs!"
He laughed bitterly. "Do you know my tale?"
"I guess it," she said.
"I played the rogue," he told her, "to a good girl, who was as far from my
understanding as I was from hers. I thought that I had got over--it, you
know, and that she and I could be happy together.
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