"

The man fell in beside her, his powerful frame overshadowing hers. It
was plain at once that the manner of her consent did not in the least
disturb him. "You're just letting me because I'm going up there anyway,
eh?" he asked. "I'll walk along further than that with you before I'm
done."

The girl paused, as if in appeal. "Ray, we've thrashed that out long
ago," she responded. "I wish you wouldn't keep talking about it. If you
want to walk with me--"

"All right, but you'll be changing your mind one of these days." Ray's
voice rang in the silence, indicating utter indifference to the fact
that many of the loungers on the street were listening to the little
scene. "I've never seen anything I wanted yet that I didn't get--and I
want you. Why don't you believe what your pop says about me? He thinks
Ray Brent is the goods."

"I'm not going to talk about it any more. I've already given you my
answer--twenty times."

The man talked on, but the girl walked with lifted chin, apparently not
hearing. They followed the board sidewalk into the shadows, finally
turning in at a ramshackle, three-room house that was perched on the
hillside almost at the end of the street at the outer limits of the
village.

The girl turned to go in, but the man held fast to her arm. "Wait just a
minute, Bee," he urged. "I've got one thing more to say to you."

The girl looked into his face, now faintly illumined by the full moon
that was rising, incredibly large and white, above the dark line of the
spruce tops. For all the regularity of his rather handsome features, his
was never an attractive face to her, even in first, susceptible
girlhood; and in the moonlight it suddenly filled her with dread. Ray
Brent was a dangerous type: imperious willed, slave to his most
degenerate instincts, reckless, as free from moral restraint as the most
savage creatures that roamed his native wilds. Now his facial lines
appeared noticeably deep, dark like scars, and curious little flakes of
iniquitous fire danced in his sunken eyes.

"Just one minute, Bee," he went on, wholly rapt in his own, devouring
desires. The dark passions of the man, always just under the skin,
seemed to be getting out of bounds. "When I want something, I don't know
how to quit till I get it. It's part of my nature. Your pop knows
that--and that's why he's made me his pardner in a big deal."

"If my father wants men like you--for his pardners, I can't speak for
his judgment."