ng?" says Captain Hammar, letting his big head lunge forward. "I
ain't joking; I'm goin' to marry that girl."

My aunt said no more while they were there. She sat like a ramrod in her
chair. That was one of the worst things about Deolda. We cover our
bodies decently with clothes, and we ought to cover up our thoughts
decently with words. But Deolda had no shame, and people with her
didn't, either. They'd say just what they were thinking about.

After they left Deolda came to Aunt Josephine and put her arms around
her like a good, sweet child.

"What's the matter, Auntie?" she asked.

"You--that's what. I can't stand it to hear you go on."

Deolda looked at her with a sort of wonder. "We were only saying out
loud what every girl's thinking about when she marries a man of
forty-five, or when she marries a man who's sixty-five. It's a
trade--the world's like that."

"Let me tell you one thing," said my aunt. "You can't fool with Capt.
Mark Hammar. It means that you give up your other sweetheart."

"That's to be seen," said Deolda in her dark, sultry way. Then she said,
as if she was talking to herself: "Life--with him--would be interesting.
He thinks he could crush me like a fly.--He can't, though--" And then
all of a sudden she burst into tears and threw herself in my aunt's lap,
sobbing: "Oh, oh! Why's life like this? Why isn't my Johnny grown up?
Why--don't he--take me away--from them all?"

After that Captain Hammar kept coming to the house. He showed well
enough he was serious.

"That black devil's hypnotized her," my aunt put it.

Deolda seemed to have some awful kinship to Mark Hammar, and Johnny
Deutra, who never paid much attention to old Conboy, paid attention to
him. Black looks passed between them, and I would catch "Nick" Hammar's
eyes resting on Johnny with a smiling venom that struck fear into me.
Johnny Deutra seldom came daytimes, but he came in late one afternoon
and sat there looking moodily at Deolda, who flung past him with the air
she had when she wore the saffron shawl. I could almost see its long
fringes trailing behind her as she stood before him, one hand on her
tilted hip, her head on one side.

It was a queer sort of day, a day with storm in the air, a day when all
our nerves got on edge, when the possibility of danger whips the blood.
I had an uncomfortable sense of knowing that I ought to leave Deolda and
Johnny and that Johnny was waiting for me to go to talk. And yet I was
fasci