"Yes, yes!" she said fiercely, her whole face distorted with emotion,
"it's true I'm crying, but if you come near me I'll kill you."

"I won't," he answered. "Cry in peace."

She took him at his word. She cried, not peacefully but wildly. She
flung herself face downward on the sofa and sobbed, with her head buried
in the cushions, while her whole body shook. She had not cried like this
since she was a little child. It was a wild luxurious abandonment of all
self-control. Once she heard O'Bannon move.

[Illustration: SHE FLUNG HERSELF FACE DOWNWARD ON THE SOFA AND SOBBED.]

"Don't touch me!" she repeated without raising her head.

"I'm not going to," he answered.

He began to walk up and down the room--up and down the room she could
hear him going. Once he went to the mantelpiece, and leaning his elbows
on the shelf he put his hands over his ears. And then without warning he
came and sat down beside her on the sofa and gathered her into his arms
like a child.

"No, no!" she said with what little was left of her voice.

"Oh, what difference does it make?" he answered.

She made no reply. She seemed hardly aware that he had drawn her head
and shoulders across his upright body so that her face was hidden in the
crook of his arm. He put his hand on her heaving shoulder, looking down
at the disordered knot of her black hair. A few minutes before he would
have said that he could not have touched her hand without setting fire
to his strong desire for her. And here she was, softly in his arms, and
his only emotion was a tenderness so comprehensive that all desires
beyond that moment were swallowed up in it.

He almost smiled to remember the futility of the explanation he had been
attempting. This was the real explanation between them. How little
difference words made, he thought, and yet how we all cling to them! He
took his free hand from her shoulder, and like a careful nurse he slid
back a hair-pin, just poised to fall from the crisp mass of her hair.

Gradually her sobs stopped, she gave a long deep breath, and presently
he saw she had fallen asleep.

There never was an hour in O'Bannon's life that he set beside that hour.
He sat like a man in a trance, and yet acutely aware of everything about
him; of the logs in the fire that, burning through, fell apart like a
blazing drawbridge across the andirons; of an occasional footstep in the
street; and finally of the inevitable approach of the rattling milk
wagon, of