n irregular
deliveries may bring bad news. Halloway received a letter, one day,
containing a summons which he could not disregard. He had spoken
contemptuously to Brent of money-grubbing, but his inflated wealth
carried certain responsibilities which even he acknowledged.

He was perfectly willing that his world should see in him an
incorrigible scoffer at moral conventions. He rather enjoyed being the
object of maternal warnings to young daughters, but in financial
affairs no stern moralist could have been more observant of rigid
integrity, and in that, as in other things, he reversed the usual
order. The business involved in the letter does not concern this
narrative save in so far as it called him in peremptory terms away from
Alexander and, at that, he fumed sulphurously.

He had, for the present, one more evening with her and he meant to make
the most of it. If there was in him any power of hypnotism, and he
still believed there was, he meant to exert it to the full.

Even in midsummer, there are chill nights in the mountains, and as he
approached Alexander's house he thought gratefully of the fire that
would be burning on her hearth.

She was sitting alone when he entered, by a small table, sewing, and
she did not rise to welcome him. Lamp and firelight mingled in an
orange and carmine glow that fell softly upon her. For a moment, as
Halloway, pausing just inside the door, gazed at her, that adventurous
hunger that fed upon her beauty became a positive avidity. Perhaps
because he was leaving her, her beauty seemed what no earthly beauty
is--absolute.

"Alexander," said Halloway slowly, "I've got ter go away fer a spell,
an' I hates hit--I hates hit like all torment!"

She looked quickly up, and his narrow scrutiny told him that she had
given ever so slight a start and that into her eyes had come a quickly
repressed disappointment.

"I'll miss ye, Jack," she said simply. "What business calls ye away?"

That was an expected question and its answer was ready.

"I've done heired me a small piece of property from an uncle, way
acrost ther Verginny line, an' I've got ter fare over thar an' sign
some papers or do somethin' ter thet amount."

"How long does ye 'low ter be gone?"

He shook his head moodily. "Hit's a long journey through ther roughs
an' I don't know how much time I'll hev ter spend over ther business,
but I reckon ye knows thet I won't tarry no longer then need be."

"Don't hasten u