"Ben, I don't know," she confessed at last frankly. "I can't tell."
"No more can I, sweetheart. I hadn't decided."
She puckered her brows in the darkness with genuine distress. Women
worry more than men over past intangibilities. He smiled comfortably to
himself, for in his grasp he held, unresisting, the dearest little hand
in the world. Outside, the ever-charming, ever-mysterious night of the
Hills was stealing here and there in sighs and silences. From the
darkness came the high sweet tenor of Bert Leslie's voice in the words
of a song:
"A Sailor to the Sea, a Hunter to the Pines,
And Sea and Pines alike to joy the Rover,
The Wood-smells to the nostrils of the Lover of the Trail,
And Hearts to Hearts the whole World over!"
Through and through the words of the song, like a fine silver wire
through richer cloth of gold, twined the long-drawn, tremulous notes
of the white-throated sparrow, the nightingale of the North.
"The dear old Hills," he murmured tenderly. "We must come back to them
often, sweetheart."
"I wish, I _wish_ I knew!" she cried, holding his hand tighter.
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