At Love's Cost

She started, and the colour flooded her face as if her lips had quite

touched his, and her eyes grew heavy as, breathing painfully, she

waited for him to entirely recover his intelligence and to speak.

"The steer!" he said at last, feebly.

She moistened her lips, and looked away from him as if she were afraid

lest he should see what was in her eyes. "The steer is all right;

but--but you!"

He forced a laugh. "Oh, I'm all right, too," he said. He looked around

hazily. "I must have come a smasher over that bank!"

Then he saw that he was lying with his head upon her knee, and with a

hot flush, the man's shame for his weakness in the presence of a woman,

he struggled into a sitting posture and looked at her, looked at her

with the forced cheerfulness of a man who has come an unforeseen,

unexpected cropper of the first magnitude.

"It was my fault. You--you were right about the horse: he ought not to

have slipped--Where's my hat? Oh here it is. The horse isn't lame, I

hope?"

"No," she said, setting her teeth in her great effort to appear calm

and unmoved. "He is standing beside Rupert--" She had got thus far when

her voice broke, and she turned her face away quickly; but not so

quickly that he did not see her exceeding pallor, the heavy droop of

the lids, the sweep of the dark lashes on her white cheek.

"Why--what's the matter, Miss Heron?" he asked, anxiously, and with all

a man's obtuseness. "_You_ didn't happen to come to grief in any way? I

didn't fall on you?--or anything? I--"

She tried to laugh, tried to laugh scornfully; for indeed she was

filled with scorn for this sudden inexplicable weakness, a weakness

which had never assailed her before in all her life, a weakness which

filled her breast with rage; but from under the closed lids two tears

crept and rolled down her cheek; and against her will she made

confession of this same foolish weakness.

"It is nothing: I am very foolish--but I--I thought you were badly

hurt--for the moment that you might even be--killed!"

He staggered to his feet and caught her hand and held it, looking at

her with that look in a man's eyes which is stronger and fiercer than

fire, and yet softer than water; the look which goes straight to a

woman's heart.

"And you cared--cared so much?" he said, in a voice so low that she

could scarcely hear it, hushed by the awe and wonder of passion.