get us to town before morning.  You’ve only to say the word, and I’ll give the sign.”  Again, nervously, shortly, he repeated the needless rasp, “How may, as you say, not interfere; but it’s useless, to take any chances.  There’s been enough tragedy already between you two, without courting more.  Besides, the past is dead; dead as though it had never been.  My lawyer is over at the ranch house now.  He’ll straighten out everything after we’re gone.  Things here are all in your name; you can do as you please with them.  There’s no possible excuse for delay.”  He bent over her, his hands on her shoulders, his eyes looking into hers compellingly.  “God knows you’ve been buried here long enough, girl.  I’ll teach you to live; to live, do you hear?  We’ll be very happy together, you and I, Bess; happier than you ever dreamed of being.  Will you come?”

He was silent, and of a sudden the place became very still; still as the dead past the man had suggested.  Wide-eyed, motionless, the girl sat looking up at him.  She did not speak; she scarcely seemed to breathe.  As she had chosen, so had it come to pass; yet involuntarily she delayed.  Deliverance from the haunting solitude that had oppressed her like an evil dream was beckoning; yet impotent, she held back.  Of a sudden, within her being, something she had fancied dormant had awakened.  The instinct of convention, fundamental, inbred, more vital to a woman than life itself, intruded preventingly, fair in her path.  Warning, pleading, distinct as a spoken admonition, its voice sounded a negative in her ears.  She tried to silence it, tried to overwhelm it with her newborn philosophy; but it was useless.  Fear of the future, as she had said, she had none.  Good or bad as the man might be, she had chosen.  With full knowledge of his deficiencies she had chosen.  But to go away with him so, without sanction of law or of clergy; she, Bess Landor, who was a wife—.

The hands on her shoulders tightened insistently, the compelling face drew nearer.

“Answer me, Bess,” demanded a tense voice; “don’t keep me in suspense.  Will you go?”

With the motion of a captured wild thing, the girl arose, drew back until she was free.

“Don’t,” she pleaded.  “Don’t hurry me so.  Give me a little time to think.”  She caught her breath from the effort.  “I’ll go with you, yes; but to-day, now—­I can’t.  We must see How first.  He must know, must consent—­”

“See How!” The man checked himself.  “You must be mad,” he digressed.  “I can’t see How, nor won’t.  I tell you it’s between How and myself you must choose.  I love you, Bess.  I’m proving I love you; but I’m not insane absolutely.  I ask you again:  will you come?”

The girl shook her head, nervously, jerkily.

“I can’t now, as things are.”

“And why not?” passionately.  “Haven’t you said you care for me?”

For answer the red lower lip trembled.  That was all.