same.

And it was there the next day when he returned, and the next, and the
next. Each night, as he lit again upon earth after his long voyaging
of the air, Dolly greeted him with an ostentatious cheerfulness
beneath which could be felt something subtly plaintive, and on her
cheek--sometimes the right, sometimes the left--always would be
the little accusing smudge.

It spoiled his flights. Following the three days spent on earth, the
hunger of the spaces had come back to him, gnawing at his vitals; each
morning he was leaving earlier, each evening he was returning later. But
all the time, in his wildest soarings, there went with him ... a leaden
pellet, a little leaden pellet, very stubborn and indissoluble, there in
his heart ... the knowledge that, alighting, at the end he would have to
face that little black smudge; that he would have to meet Dolly's
cheerful greeting with its subtle, plaintive undercurrent, and the faint
smudge upon her cheek.

Dolly, as a matter of fact, was not weeping all the time, down there in
the meadow. The care of the cabin, the preparation of the meals, gave her
each day several hours of humming content; and in the afternoon she would
have several good romps with Nicodemus. But there were also heavy hours
during which the solitude of the land seemed to draw nigh from all
sides; when she panted, almost, to its pressure, and felt very little
and miserable indeed. So that Charles-Norton, dropping like an archangel
out of the sky, found always upon her cheek the trace of an erasure made
completely enough to show a determination to hide tears, but not quite
enough to obliterate the determination; and leaving in the morning, he
felt her eyes wistful upon him in a humble and unspoken reproach which
all day followed him, stubborn as his own shadow, the shadow which he
could never escape. He fought well, did Charles-Norton. He tried hard not
to see the little black smudge, not to think about it; and above all, not
to let her know that he saw it. But all the time the weight was there
within him, spoiling his flights.

One morning, seeing in a sudden flash of naive hope a solution of their
problem, he tried to take her with him. Making a sling out of a strip of
blanket, he passed it about his waist, sat her in the slack, and rose in
the air. Thus, holding her beneath the shadow of his wings as in a swing,
he flitted about, above the meadow, rising, chuting down in long, smooth
slants, circling,