no more, no less!"

Her eyes flashed into his: "You are Hilary Kincaid. I will stan'!"

"No,"--he loosed his hold,--"I'm _only_ Hilary Kincaid and you'll go--in
mercy to both of us--in simple good faith to every one we love--Oh,
leave me!" He swung his head in torture: "I'd sooner be shot for a spy
or a coward than be the imbecile this makes me." Then all at once he was
fierce: "Go!"

Almost below her breath she instantly replied, "I will not!" She stood
at her full, beautiful height. "Together we go or together stay.
List-en!--no-no, not for _that_." (Meaning the gun.) In open anger she
crimsoned again: "'Twill shoot, all right, and Anna, _she'll_ go. Yes,
she will _leave_ you. She can do that. And you, you can sen' her away!"

He broke in with a laugh of superior knowledge and began to draw back,
but she caught his jacket in both hands, still pouring forth,--"She
_has_ leave you--to me! me to you! My God! Hilary Kincaid, could she do
that if she love' you? She don't! She knows not how--and neither you!
But you, ah, you shall learn. She, she never can!" Through his jacket
her knuckles felt the bare knife. Her heart leapt.

"Let go," he growled, backing away and vainly disengaging now one of her
hands and now the other. "My trowel's too silent."

But she clung and dragged, speaking on wildly: "You know, Hilary, you
know? _You love me_. Oh, no-no-no, don' look like that, I'm not crazee."
Her deft hands had got the knife, but she tossed it into the
work-basket: "Ah, Hilary Kincaid, oft-en we love where we thing we do
not, and oft-en thing we love where we do not--"

He would not hear: "Oh, Flora Valcour! You smother me in my own
loathing--oh, God send that gun!" The four hands still strove.

"Hilary, list-en me yet a moment. See me. Flora Valcour. Could Flora
Valcour do like this--_ag-ains' the whole nature of a woman_--if she--?"

"Stop! stop! you shall not--"

"If she di'n' know, di'n' feel, di'n' see, thad you are loving her?"

"Yet God knows I've never given cause, except as--"

"A ladies' man?" prompted the girl and laughed.

The blood surged to his brow. A wilder agony was on hers as he held her
from him, rigid; "Enough!" he cried; "We're caged and doomed. Yet you
still have this one moment to save us, _all of us_, from life-long shame
and sorrow."

She shook her head.

"Yes, yes," he cried. "You can. I cannot. I'm helpless now and forever.
What man or woman, if I could ever be so vile as to tell i