They were silent. Benson had said all there was to say, yet he made no move to go. That he had not seen Mrs. Walsh did not matter since the real purpose of his drive to the farm had been accomplished. He had seen Virginia; he had lacked the strength to deny himself this perilous joy. Away from her he forgot rebuffs and slights; he remembered only her beauty, the depths of her eyes; the poise of her head; some swift graceful gesture; and he lived in the spell of these things; and the desire, strong and not to be denied, to see her, would assert itself. To be near her was to feel himself ennobled, to thrill with a curious sense of purification; but he was conscious that his feeling for her, which had grown out of a boyish admiration for a woman's beauty that seemed finer and nobler than anything he had known in a woman before, was sweeping him away by imperceptible gradations from all his ideals of conduct and manhood; yet he would have been loath to call this secret ecstasy he knew in her presence, love. In his moments of self-searching he told himself that her indifference more than punished him for the pleasure he derived from being near her; but he expected to suffer; that was something he could not hope to escape. Virginia moved impatiently. “I will tell Jane all you have told me, when I think she is able to bear it. It will be a terrible disappointment to her.” Then she shot him a swift glance. “You have not heard from Stephen?” she spoke unsteadily, and to Benson it seemed reluctantly as well. “Not since he left Fort Laramie. I suppose we can hardly realize the difficulties he encounters in sending his letters East for mailing, here we have every modern convenience; the stage each day—” Her grave eyes were bent upon his face; she was seeking to determine the depth of his conviction. “What would you do if it was one you loved who was so strangely silent, who had gone, and from whom you could not hear?” she asked. He met her glance helplessly. “Perhaps the letters are lost,” he said at last. “That's what every one tells me,” she smiled wearily. “It is not an unreasonable conjecture,” he urged. “Nothing is unreasonable; but nothing will satisfy me until I hear from him.” “No, of course not.” “It was three months ago—three months ago—that I heard last!” “But consider the difficulties, the distance; I wouldn't give way to—” he did not finish the sentence, for Virginia had risen, and moving swiftly to the window stood with her back to him, looking out into the night. “Can't you explain his silence? I am dying for some word of comfort—why don't you speak and tell me he is safe!” “Most assuredly I think he is safe, Mrs. Landray,” said Benson, who had also risen. “What do you understand by their silence then? I've wanted to ask you,” she turned toward him as she spoke. Benson fell back a step, and under her steady gaze his face lost colour. “Why, I—I hope for the best,” he said at last.