"Did you sleep long?" she asked for something to say.
"I don't know how long. A little while ago I woke up and looked for
you, but you weren't anywhere round, so I just lay here and looked out
across to the mountains and began to think of California. I haven't
thought about it for a long while."
She sat down by him and listened as he told her his thoughts. With a
renewal of strength the old dreams had come back--the cabin by the
river, the garden seeds to be planted, and now added to them was the
gold they were to find. She hearkened with unresponsive apathy. The
repugnance to this mutually shared future which had once made her
recoil from it was a trivial thing to the abhorrence of it that was now
hers. Dislikes had become loathings, a girl's whims, a woman's
passions. As David babbled on she kept her eyes averted, for she knew
that in them her final withdrawal shone coldly. Her thoughts kept
reverting to the scene in the cleft, and when she tore them from it and
forced them back on him, her conscience awoke and gnawed. She could no
more tell this man, returning to life and love of her, than she could
kill him as he lay there defenseless and trusting.
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