saw Cleve through a blur. He was almost running now. Involuntarily
she fled into the grove. It was dark and cool; it smelled sweetly of
pine; there were narrow aisles and little sunlit glades. She hurried
on till a fallen tree blocked her passage. Here she turned--she would
wait--the tree was good to lean against. There came Cleve, a dark,
stalking shadow. She did not remember him like that. He entered the
glade.

"Speak again!" he said, thickly. "Either I'm drunk or crazy!"

But Joan could not speak. She held out hands that shook--swept them to
her face--tore at the mask. Then with a gasp she stood revealed.

If she had stabbed him straight through the heart he could not have been
more ghastly. Joan saw him, in all the terrible transfiguration
that came over him, but she had no conceptions, no thought of what
constituted that change. After that check to her mind came a surge of
joy.

"Jim!... Jim! It's Joan!" she breathed, with lips almost mute.

"JOAN!" he gasped, and the sound of his voice seemed to be the passing
from horrible doubt to certainty.

Like a panther he leaped at her, fastened a powerful hand at the neck of
her blouse, jerked her to her knees, and began to drag her. Joan fought
his iron grasp. The twisting and tightening of her blouse choked her
utterance. He did not look down upon her, but she could see him, the
rigidity of his body set in violence, the awful shade upon his face, the
upstanding hair on his head. He dragged her as if she had been an empty
sack. Like a beast he was seeking a dark place--a hole to hide her.
She was strangling; a distorted sight made objects dim; and now she
struggled instinctively. Suddenly the clutch at her neck loosened;
gaspingly came the intake of air to her lungs; the dark-red veil left
her eyes. She was still upon her knees. Cleve stood before her, like a
gray-faced demon, holding his gun level, ready to fire.

"Pray for your soul--and mine!"

"Jim! Oh Jim!... Will you kill yourself, too?"

"Yes! But pray, girl--quick!"

"Then I pray to God--not for my soul--but just for one more moment of
life... TO TELL YOU, JIM!"

Cleve's face worked and the gun began to waver. Her reply had been a
stroke of lightning into the dark abyss of his jealous agony.

Joan saw it, and she raised her quivering face, and she held up her arms
to him. "To tell--you--Jim!" she entreated.

"What?" he rasped out.

"That I'm innocent--that I'm as good--a girl--as ever.. ever....