At length I gathered sufficient composure to step to her side again.

“Once more, little comrade, good-bye,” I said. “This ends it all.”

Again she turned her shoulder to me, but I heard her low reply:

“Good-bye — Mr. Loskiel.”

And so it ended.

A moment later I found myself walking aimlessly across the grass in no particular direction. Three times I turned in my tracks to watch her. Then she disappeared beyond the brookside willows.

I remember now that I had turned and was walking slowly back to where our horses stood, moving listlessly through the freshly mowed meadow between drenched haystacks — the first I had seen that year —