w, Tom, time is slipping by. It's nearly midnight. We've got to talk
sensibly and calmly. Sit here by me and be as sane as you can. We know
we love one another. That's been said and resaid; that's settled. Now
shall I first break for liberty--or will you? That must all be settled
too. We can't just let things drift. I'm twenty-seven. You're
thirty-five. Life is passing. Now when?"

They shrank before the light of a street car rounding the corner, that
gleamed into their retreat. When it had gone, the man bowed his fine,
proud, handsome head, and spoke with his eyes upon the ground:

"You go first--you have the best cause!" She looked upon his cowardly,
sloping shoulders, and thought a moment. It was the tigress behind the
flame who stooped over him, pondering, feeling her way through events
that she had been going over and over in her imagination for weeks. The
feline caution that guided her, told her, as it had always told her,
that his letters were enough to damn him, but maybe not enough to hold
him. She was not sure of men. Their standards might not be severe enough
to punish him; he, knowing this, might escape. All this--this old query
without answer went hurrying through her mind. But she was young; the
spirit of adventure was in her. Henry Fenn, weak, vacillating,
chivalrous, adoring Henry Fenn, had not conquered her; and the fire in
her blood, and the ambition in her brain, came over her as a spell. She
slipped to her knees, putting her head upon her lover's breast, and
cried passionately in a guttural murmur--"Yes, I'll go first, Tom--now,
for God's sake, kiss me--kiss me and run." Then she sprang up: "Now,
go--go--go, Tom--run before I take it back. Don't touch me again," she
cried. "Go."

She slipped back into the door, then turned and caught him again and
they stood for a terrible moment together. She whirled into the house,
clicked the door after her and left him standing a-tremble, gaping and
mad in the night. But she knew her strength, and knew his weakness and
was not afraid.

She let him moan a wordless lovesong, very low and terrible in the night
alone before the door, and did not answer. Then she saw him go softly
down the steps, look up and down the street, move guiltily across the
yard, hiding behind a bush at a distant footfall, and slip slowly into
the sidewalk and go hurrying away from the house. In half an hour she
was waiting for Henry Fenn as a cat might wait at a rat hole.

The next day