e to-night I can never hope to explain," she told him.
"I can only hope that some day I may cease to despise myself as utterly
as you have taught me to, at this minute. And since you choose to
regard it now as your right to ask that question, I'll answer it for
you. I do not _mean_ to marry him. I shall be proud to be his wife!"

The light that streamed over her shoulder fell full upon his face. She
saw the blood pour up, staining throat and cheek and brow, and then ebb
away. She gave him time to answer, but he did not speak; and suddenly
she knew what scene of another day he was remembering. Her eyes
dropped to her imprisoned hand.

"You are--detaining me," she said.

He released her immediately, and yet she did not move. And while she
waited he turned and stooped and turned to her again. She stood like
stone while he wrapped her fur-edged sapphire cloak about her and
fastened it close beneath her uptilted chin. He waited, bare of head,
in the hedge gap until she had crossed the lawn to the house that lay a
sprawling glow-worm in the darkness. A tumult of voices leaped out to
him when she opened the door--a lilting crash of syncopated melody.
And then it was quiet again.

After a glimpse of his chief's eyes that night, Fat Joe essayed not so
much as one facetious protest against turning the fagged team homeward
with scarcely any rest at all. And hour after hour he drove in
silence, checking himself apologetically once or twice when he forgot
himself long enough to burst into the opening strains of his inevitable
ballad. He remained as quiet as that too quiet man beside him, until
Steve himself opened his lips.

"It's a--lonesome night," mused the latter at length.

Fat Joe could not have endured it much longer. His pent-up spirit
leaped fervidly forth in reply.

"Lonesome!" he ejaculated. "Man, it's lonesomer'n hell! Hear that
damn wind sighin' in the branches, as your poets say. Hear her moan!
And look at them clouds edgin' in on the moon like they was thugs
a-packin' blackjacks and waitin' for an openin' to whale in. Lonesome?
Say, it gives me chills, a night like this. It don't seem to have no
heart, somehow, nor mercy nor nuthin', does it? It's all wrong! It
ain't dark enough, and it ain't light enough; it's too quiet, and the
wind makes too much noise. It keeps whisperin' over your shoulder,
tauntin' yuh with somethin' you can't understand. No, sir, this kind
of a night ain't popular