He pinched her cheek with his old familiarity, but under the duress of his own thinking did not notice that she failed to respond in any way to his pretended mood. "I thought I'd like to walk a little an' get th' air," she said. "An' ... tell you that I'm goin' away." "Away, Nora?" "Yes, I'm goin' to Prescott, Bruce." He lifted his hat and scratched his ear and moved beside her as she started walking along the road, now a dim tape under the mountain stars. "Why, Nora, I thought you was a fixture here; what'll we do without you?" He did not know how that hurt her, how the thought that he _could_ do without her hung about her heart like a sodden weight. She covered it well, holding her voice steady, restraining the discouragement that wanted to break into words, and the night kept secret with her the pallor of her face. "I guess you'll get along, Bruce; you done it before I come an' I guess th' town'll keep on prosperin' after I leave. I ... I got a chance to go into business." "Why, that's fine, Sister." "A lunch counter that I can get for two hundred; I've saved more 'n that since ... since I come here. That'll be better than workin' for somebody else an' I figure I'll make as much and maybe considerable more." "That's fine!" he repeated. "Fine, Nora!" In spite of the complexity of his thinking he found an interval of respite and was truly glad for her. "I ... I wanted to tell you before anybody else knew, 'cause I ... Well, you made it possible. If you hadn't done this for me ... this here in Yavapai ... I'd never been ..." He laughed at her. "Oh, yes you would, Nora. You had it in you. If I hadn't happened along some one else would. What we're goin' to be, we're goin' to be, I figure. I was only a lucky chance." "Lucky," she repeated. "Lucky! God, Bruce, lucky for me!" "Naw, lucky for me, Nora. Why, don't you know that every man likes to have some woman dependin' on him? It's in us to want some female woman lookin' to us for protection an' help. It tickled me to death to think I was helpin' you, when, all the time, I knew down in my heart, I was only an accident.'' "You can say that, Bruce, but you can't make me believe it." They walked far, talking of the past, of her future, but not once did the conversation touch on Ann Lytton. Bayard kept away from it because of that privacy with which he had come to look on the affair, and the girl knew that his presence there in town after Ann's departure for the ranch could mean only that a crisis had been reached. With her woman's heart, her intuition, she was confident of what the outcome would be. And though she had given her all to help bring it about, she knew that the sound of it in speech would precipitate that self-revelation which she had avoided so long, at such cost. "I'll see you again," she said, when they stood before the hotel and she was ready to enter for the night. "I'll see you again before I go, Bruce. And--I ... thank you ... thank you...."