She stopped, aware that the life of the man beside her was one of the unpaid debts so luridly present to her mind.

“Sylvia,” said Arnold, hesitating, “Sylvia, all this sounds so—­look here, are you sure you’re in love with Austin?”

She looked at him, her eyes steady as stars.  “Aren’t there as many ways of being in love, as there are people?” she asked.  “I don’t know—­I don’t know if it’s what everybody would call being in love—­but—­” She met his eyes, and unashamed, regally, opened her heart to him with a look.  “I can’t live without Austin,” she said quickly, in a low tone.

He looked at her long, and turned away.  “Oh yes, you’re in love with him, all right!” he murmured finally, “and I don’t believe that the Colorado business or any of the rest of what you’re saying has much to do with anything.  Austin’s a live man and you’re in love with him; and that’s all there is to it.  You’re lucky!” He took out his handkerchief, and wiped his forehead and the back of his neck.  Sylvia, looking at him more closely, was shocked to see how thin and haggard was his face.  He asked now, “Did you ever think that maybe what Austin was thinking about when he chucked the money was what you’d say, how you’d take it?  I should imagine,” he added with a faint smile,’ “that he is hard to please if he’s not pretty well satisfied.”

Sylvia was startled.  “No.  Why no,” she said, “I thought I’d looked at every single side of it, but I never dreamed of that.”

“Oh, I don’t mean he did it for that!  Lord, no!  I suppose it’s been in his mind for years.  But afterwards, don’t you suppose he thought ... he’d been run after for his money such a terrible lot, you know ... don’t you suppose he thought he’d be sure of you one way or the other, about a million times surer than he could have been any other way; if you stuck by him, don’t you see, with old Felix there with all his fascinations, plus Molly’s money.”  He turned on her with a sudden confused wonder in his face.  “God!  What a time he took to do it!  I hadn’t realized all his nerve till this minute.  He must have known what it meant, to leave you there with Felix ... to risk losing you as well as—­Any other man would have tried to marry you first and then—!  Well, what a dead-game sport he was!  And all for a lot of dirty Polacks who’d never laid eyes on him!”

He took his riding-cap from his head and tossed it on the dried pine-needles.  Sylvia noticed that his dry, thin hair was already receding from his parchment-like forehead.  There were innumerable fine lines about his eyes.  One eyelid twitched spasmodically at intervals.  He looked ten years older than his age.  He looked like a man who would fall like a rotten tree at the first breath of sickness.