'd rather DIE than let him--"

Miss Georgie clapped a hand over her mouth, and stopped her. Also, she
gripped her by the shoulder indignantly.

"'Vadna Ramsey, I'm ashamed of you!" she cried furiously. "For Heaven's
sake, Grant, go on off somewhere and wait till she settles down. Don't
stand there looking like a stone image--didn't you ever see a case
of nerves before? She doesn't know what she's saying--if she did, she
wouldn't be saying it. You go on, and let me handle her alone. Men are
just a nuisance in a case like this."

She pushed Evadna before her into the kitchen, waited until Phoebe had
followed, and then closed the door gently and decisively upon Grant. But
not before she had given him a heartening smile just to prove that he
must not take Evadna seriously, because she did not.

"We'd better take her to her room, Mrs. Hart," she suggested, "and make
her lie down for a while. That poor fellow--as if he didn't have enough
on his hands without this!"

"I'm not on his hands! And I won't lie down!" Evadna jerked away from
Miss Georgie, and confronted them both pantingly, her cheeks still wet
with tears. "You act as if I don't know what I'm doing' and I DO know.
If I should lie down for a MILLION YEARS, I'd feel just the same about
it. I couldn't bear him to TOUCH me! I--"

"For Heaven's sake, don't shout it," Miss Georgie interrupted,
exasperatedly. "Do you want him--"

"To hear? _I_ don't care whether he does or not." Evadna was turning
sullen at the opposition. "He'll have to know it SOME TIME, won't he? If
you think can forgive a thing like that and let--"

"He had to do it. Baumberger would have killed HIM. He had a perfect
right to kill. He'd have been a fool and a coward if he hadn't. You come
and lie down a while."

"I WON'T lie down. I don't care if he did have to do it--I couldn't
love him afterward. And he didn't have to go down there and threaten
Stanley--and--HE'LL DO IT, TOO!" She fell to trembling again. "He'll DO
it--at sundown."

Phoebe and Miss Georgie looked at each other. He would, if the men
stayed. They knew that.

"And I was going to marry him!" Evadna shuddered when she said it, and
covered her face with her two hands. "He wasn't sorry afterward; you
could see he wasn't sorry. He was ready to kill more men. It's the
Indian in him. He LIKES to kill people. He'll kill those men, and he
won't be a bit sorry he did it. And he could come to me afterward and
expect me--Oh, what does