in-blooded cowards."

She made no answer at all, not a word. His flaming eyes fell away from
her face. He turned from her abruptly and walked rapidly away, not
looking back.

Then he found he had ceased to advance rapidly, had stopped and was
standing still, wrung in so dreadful a pain that his hand was at his
side as though he had been stabbed. With no thought, with no awareness
of what he was doing, he ran back to her, his hands outstretched,
suffering so that he must have help. He did not mean to speak, did not
know what he was to say . . . he cried out to her, "Marise, Marise . . . I
love you! _What can I do?_"

The cry was desperate, involuntary, forcing its way out from unfathomed
depths of feeling below all his anger and resentment, and tearing him to
pieces as it came. It was as though he had taken his heart out and flung
it at her feet.

Her face changed instantly and was quiveringly alight with a pale and
guilty agitation. "No . . . oh _no_, Vincent! I thought you only . . . I
had thought you could not really . . . Vincent, forgive me! Forgive me!"
She took one of his hands in both hers . . . the last unforgotten touch
he was ever to have of her. . . .

* * * * *

It came to him through those words which he did not understand that she
was pitying him; and stung to the quick, he drew back from her,
frowning, with an angry toss of his head.

Instantly she drew back also, as though she had misinterpreted
something.

He stood for an instant looking full at her as though he did not see
her; and then with a wide gesture of utter bewilderment, strange from
him, he passed her without a look.

This time he did not turn back, but continued steadily and resolutely on
his way.

CHAPTER XXVII

THE FALL OF THE BIG PINE

August 2.

I

When Marise reached the place on the wood-road where she had had that
last talk with Vincent Marsh, she stopped, postponing for a moment the
errand to the Powers which she had so eagerly undertaken. She stood
there, looking up into the far green tops of the pines, seeing again
that strange, angry, bewildered gesture with which he had renounced
trying to make anything out of her, and had turned away.

It remained with her, constantly, as the symbol of what had happened,
and she looked at it gravely and understandingly. Then, very swiftly,
she saw again that passing aspect of his which had so terribly
frightened her, felt again the fear