any more so. You know how I
would naturally regard the man who I feel has my wife; but let us
forget about him. Listen to my plan. All I ask of you is to go with me
to some distant place where neither of us are known, and--"

"Never!" she interrupted.

"Don't say that," he replied coolly. "Do you think I'm a man to be
trifled with after what I've been through?"

"You can't compel me to go against my will," and there was an accent of
terror in her words which made them a question.

He saw his vantage more clearly and said quietly, "I don't want to
compel you if it can be helped. You know how true I was to you--"

"No, no! You deceived me. I won't believe you now."

"You may have to. At any rate, you know how fond I was of you, and I
tell you plainly, I won't give you up now. This man doesn't love you,
nor do you love him--"

"I DO love him, I'd die for him! There now, you know the truth. You
wouldn't compel a woman to follow you who shrinks from you in horror,
even if you had the right. Although the ceremony was brief it WAS a
ceremony; and he was not married then, as you were when you deceived
me. He has ever been truth itself, and I won't believe you have any
rights till he tells me so himself."

"So you shrink from me with horror, do you?" asked Ferguson, rising,
his face growing black with passion.

"Yes, I do. Now leave me and let me never see you again."

"And you are going to ask this stupid old farmer about my rights?"

"Yes. I'll take proof of them from no other, and even if he confirmed
your words I'd never live with you again. I would live alone till I
died!"

"That's all very foolish high tragedy, but if you're not careful there
may be some real tragedy. If you care for this Holcroft, as you say,
you had better go quietly away with me."

"What do you mean?" she faltered tremblingly.

"I mean I'm a desperate man whom the world has wronged too much
already. You know the old saying, 'Beware of the quiet man!' You know
how quiet, contented, and happy I was with you, and so I would be again
to the end of my days. You are the only one who can save me from
becoming a criminal, a vagabond, for with you only have I known
happiness. Why should I live or care to live? If this farmer clod
keeps you from me, woe betide him! My one object in living will be his
destruction. I shall hate him only as a man robbed as I am can hate."

"What would you do?" she could only ask in a horrified