she had
already had disturbing secret doubts that had increased of late:
doubts of his habits, his character and the genuineness of his love;
so that it was with a little eddy of dissatisfaction and shame that
she admitted the relationship. More she questioned her own love as an
actual thing. In a startling way, too, this silent, forceful man, so
deadly in earnest and so earnestly deadly, so terrible in some
aspects, seemed at the instant to dwarf the other in stature and power
as if the latter were a plump manikin.

Perhaps at the last minute she had a shiver of dread at what might
issue from the engineer's lips in the way of facts if he took her at
her word and told her what she had demanded to know. Did she want to
know? Suppose she let the affair rest where it was and went forward
to the future in the comfortable assurance of ignorance.

In that case, it might be wooing later revelations that then could not
be escaped, revelations like consuming lightnings. She would settle it
now once for all.

"It does concern my future and my happiness vitally," she declared,
earnestly. "For this reason----"

"Yes?"

"I'm engaged to marry Ed Sorenson, son of Mr. Sorenson."

Weir leaped to his feet.

"Good God! That fellow!" he exclaimed, astounded.

Without another word he sprang down the steps and strode away. Janet
Hosmer, grasping the arms of her chair and staring after him, saw him
once bring down his clenched fist on nothing. Then he passed rapidly
along the street and out of sight.

CHAPTER VII

IN THE COIL

The Spirit of Irony couldn't have devised a more intolerable
situation. So thought Steele Weir as he strode away from the
dwelling, still laboring under the emotions provoked by the girl's
disclosure, wincing at his own biting thoughts and writhing at his
own helplessness. It needed only this revelation to cap the whole
diabolical evening.

He could not have remained with her now if his life had depended on
it. She, engaged to that scoundrel Ed Sorenson! How could she have
been so blind to the lustful beast's nature? She must love him, of
course. He must have been careful to exhibit to her only such
qualities as would gain her affection and respect, or rather hollow
shams of qualities he never had possessed. Propinquity, lack of rivals
in this little town, no doubt were largely responsible for her feeling
for the man. But it was like standing by and seeing her fair young
body, her fresh pure li