"I'll give you a chance, then," she said, and she shrank from the hand he put out toward her. "Go back and tell that girl you're free now, and if she wants you she can have you.""Is that what you call a chance?" demanded Jeff, between anger and injury. For an instant he imagined her deriding him and revenging herself.
"It's the only one I can give you. She's never tried to make you do what was right, and you'll never be tempted to hurt her.""You're pretty rough on me, Cynthy," Jeff protested, almost plaintively.
He asked, more in character: " Ain't you afraid of making me do right, now?""I'm not making you. I don't promise you anything, even if she won't have you.""Oh!"
"Did you suppose I didn't mean that you were free? That I would put a lie in your mouth for you to be true with?""I guess you're too deep for me," said Jeff, after a sulky silence.
"Then it's all off between us? What do you say?""What do you say?"
"I say it's just as it was before, if you care for me.""I care for you, but it can never be the same as it was before. What you've done, you've done. I wish I could help it, but I can't. I can't make myself over into what I was twenty-four hours ago. I seem another person, in another world; it's as if I died, and came to life somewhere else. I'm sorry enough, if that could help, but it can't. Go and tell that girl the truth: that you came up here to me, and I sent you back to her."A gleam of amusement visited Jeff in the gloom where he seemed to be darkling. He fancied doing that very thing with Bessie Lynde, and the wild joy she would snatch from an experience so unique, so impossible.
Then the gleam faded. "And what if I didn't want her?" he demanded.
"Tell her that too," said Cynthia.
"I suppose," said Jeff, sulkily, "you'll let me go away and do as Iplease, if I'm free."
"Oh yes. I don't want you to do anything because I told you. I won't make that mistake again. Go and do what you are able to do of your own free will. You know what you ought to do as well as I do; and you know a great deal better what you can do."They had reached Cynthia's house, and they were talking at the side door, as they had the night before, when there had been hope for her in the newness of her calamity, before she had yet fully imagined it.
Jeff made no answer to her last words. He asked, "Am I going to see you again?""I guess not. I don't believe I shall be up before you start.""All right. Good-bye, then." He held out his hand, and she put hers in it for the moment he chose to hold it. Then he turned and slowly climbed the hill.
Cynthia was still lying with her face in her pillow when her father came into the dark little house, and peered into her room with the newly lighted lamp in his hand. She turned her face quickly over and looked at him with dry and shining eyes.
"Well, it's all over with Jeff and me, father.""Well, I'm satisfied," said Whitwell. "If you could ha' made it up, so you could ha' felt right about it, I shouldn't ha' had anything to say against it, but I'm glad it's turned out the way it has. He's a comical devil, and he always was, and I'm glad you a'n't takin' on about him any more. You used to have so much spirit when you was little.""Oh,--spirit! You don't know how much spirit I've had, now.""Well, I presume not," Whitwell assented.
"I've been thinking," said the girl, after a little pause, " that we shall have to go away from here.""Well, I guess not," her father began. "Not for no Jeff Dur--""Yes, yes. We must! Don't make one talk about it. We'll stay here till Jackson gets back in June, and then--we must go somewhere else. We'll go down to Boston, and I'll try to get a place to teach, or something, and Frank can get a place.""I presume," Whitwell mused, "that Mr. Westover could--""Father!" cried the girl, with an energy that startled him, as she lifted herself on her elbow. "Don't ever think of troubling Mr. Westover! Oh,"she lamented, "I was thinking of troubling him myself! But we mustn't, we mustn't! I should be so ashamed!""Well," said Whitwell, "time enough to think about all that. We got two good months yet to plan it out before Jackson gets back, and I guess we can think of something before that. I presume," he added, thoughtfully, "that when Mrs. Durgin hears that you've give Jeff the sack, she'll make consid'able of a kick. She done it when you got engaged."
