"
Winston turned his head away, and both women wondered when he looked
round again. His face seemed a trifle drawn, and his voice was
strained.
"I hope," he said slowly, "it will in some degree make amends for
others I have done. In the meanwhile, there are reasons why your
confidence humiliates me."
Miss Barrington rose and her niece after her. "Still, I believe it is
warranted, and you will remember there are two women who have trusted
you, hoping for your success. And now, I fancy we have kept you too
long."
Winston stood holding the door open a moment, with his head bent, and
then suddenly straightened himself.
"I can at least be honest with you in this venture," he said with a
curious quietness.
Nothing further was said, but when his guests drove away Winston sat
still a while and then went back very grim in face to his plowing. He
had passed other unpleasant moments of that kind since he came to
Silverdale, and long afterwards the memory of them brought a flush to
his face. The excuses he had made seemed worthless when he strove to
view what he had done, and was doing, through those women's eyes.
It was dusk when he returned to the homestead, worn, out in body but
more tranquil in mind, and stopped a moment in the doorway to look back
on the darkening sweep of the plowing. He felt with no misgivings that
his time of triumph would come, and in the meanwhile the handling of
this great farm with all the aids that money could buy him was a keen
joy to him; but each time he met Maud Barrington's eyes he realized the
more surely that the hour of his success must also see accomplished an
act of abnegation, which he wondered with a growing fear whether he
could find the strength for.
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