sorry for what I did—but it’s done. Nothing can undo it. Won’t you—won’t you let me have just a chance?”

“But look here! Even if the man didn’t come tonight, he’d come some other time. You don’t expect me to—”

He stopped short, appalled by the words he had not spoken. He looked at her, and in the gathering dusk he saw upon her white face that terrible, still look again.

“No!” he cried.

“Jimmy!” she said. “Just keep him from coming tonight. Then tomorrow I’ll tell you the whole thing. And perhaps you’ll think of something to do. But—just tonight—keep him from coming!”

Ross made no answer.

“Down here, Jimmy—to the left,” she said, presently, and he turned the car down a solitary lane, narrow, scored with ruts of half frozen mud. It had grown so dark now that he turned on the headlights.

“There!” she said. “That’s the house. Let me out!”

He stopped the car.

“Look here!” he began, but she had sprung out, and was hurrying across a field of stubble. He could not let her go alone. He followed her, sick at heart, filled again with that sense of utter solitude, of being cut off from all his fellows, in a desolate and unreal world. His soul revolted against this monstrous adventure, and yet he could not abandon her.

She went before him, light, surprisingly sure-footed upon those high heels of hers. For some reason of her own, she had chosen to approach the house from the side, instead of following the curve of the lane. She came to a fence, and climbed it like a cat, and Ross climbed after her.

They were in a forlorn garden, where the withered grass stood high, and before them was the sorriest little cottage, battered and discolored by wind and rain, all the shutters closed, not a light, not a curtain, not a sign of life about it.

“Look here!” Ross began again. “I’ve got to know—”

She ran up the steps to the porch, where a broken rocking-chair began to rock as she brushed it in passing. She opened the door and entered; it was dark in there, but she ran up the stairs as if she knew them well; before he was halfway up, he heard her hurrying footsteps on the floor above, heard doors open 

 Prev. P 34/90 next