His hands, suddenly flung out, were upon her. She tore them away,
wrenched herself free from him, and started back. As she did so her
little silken bundle dropped at her feet. Gratton caught it up and
buried his face in it. Now as he looked up at her his eyes and all that
she could see of his face were stamped with that which lay in his heart.

"Oh!" she cried, shrinking not so much from him as from the thing she
read so plainly at last. "Surely, you do not think ... you do not
misinterpret ... my being here at all, my being with Mr. King...."

"No," cried Gratton wildly. "I misinterpret nothing. You came alone with
him into the mountains. What chance is there for two interpretations
there? You gave yourself to him; you saw your mistake; you hated him.
You have come to me. I have always loved you; I want you."

Her cheeks flamed red with hot anger. There was a flutter in her heart,
a wild tremor in her blood. She drew back from him. He followed, his
arms out. She was amazed, for the moment shocked into consternation. And
yet she knew no such terror as had been hers when King had advanced on
her, rope in hand. Her new contempt of Gratton was too high for that.
Now she marked the small stature, little taller, little stronger, than
her own; the pale face, the narrow chest, the slender body.

"You know what I mean, what I want," he was muttering. "That sweet
young-thing innocence is all right in its place but that place is not
here alone in the mountains with a man."

"Man!" she burst out scathingly. "You, _a man_! Why, you wretched little
beast!"

But Gratton, his brain reeling with hot fancy, came on.

"You were afraid of King. You said that he made you do what he wanted.
What about me? You are going to do what I tell you. I ...By God, I will
make you! Beast, you call me? No more beast than any other man. I have
wanted you all these years. You have wanted me, or you would not have
been so glad to see me. Only a few days ago you were ready to marry me!
And now ..."

His arms groped for her. Gloria swept up a dead pine limb that lay by
the fire and swung it in both hands and struck him full across the face.
He reeled back and stood, half in the shadow, his shoulders to the rock
wall, his hands to his face.

"You beast!" she panted. "You cowardly, contemptible beast."

From the way in which he brought his hand down and looked at it and laid
it back upon his lips she knew that his mouth was bleeding. And she read
i