“Miss Markham, I, too, must say a thing to you:  from my boyhood to this hour, deeply, passionately, with my whole heart and soul, have I loved you.”

There was no mistaking; the intensity of his voice made his words thrill.  She recoiled from them as if stunned, and turned her face, pale now, and marked, fully towards him.

“What!  What did you say?”

“I love you!” with a deep, full voice.

“How dare you utter such words to me?”

Her eyes flashed and nostrils dilated.

“Because they are true; because I am a man and you are a woman,” steadily and proudly.

“A man! you a man!  Is it manly to waylay me in this lonely place, and force yourself upon me, and insult me with this?  You compel me to—­to—­”

“Scorn and despise you!” supplied the youth, in a bitter tone.

“Take the words, then, if you choose them.”

She was simply grand in her style, till this last expression, which had the angry snap of an enraged woman.  Some high natures might have answered back her scorn; a lower one might have complained; and still another would have left her in the woods.  Barton said nothing, but, with a cold, stony face, walked on by her side.  If, in his desperation, he wanted this killing thrust, which must ever rankle and never heal, to enable him to overcome and subdue his great passion, he had got it.  That little hand, that emphasized her words with a gesture of superb disdain, would never have to repeat the blow.  It raised about her a barrier that he was never after to approach.

He was not a man to complain.  He would have told her why he said these words; he could not now.  Some men are like wolves in traps, and die without a moan.  Barton could die, and smile back into the face of his slayer, and say no word.

Night was now deepening in the woods, with the haughty maiden, and high, proud and humiliated youth, walking still side by side through its shadows.  They at length reached the path that led from the open way to the left, approaching Julia’s home.  There was a continuous thicket of thrifty second-growth young trees bordering the track along which the two were journeying, and the opening through it made by this narrow path was black with shadow, like the entrance to a cave.

“This is the way,” said Bart, turning into it.

These were the first words he had uttered, and came as if from a distance.  Without a word of hesitation Julia turned into the path with him, yet with almost a shudder at the darkness.  They had not taken a dozen steps when an appalling, shrieking yell, a brute yell, of ferocious animal rage—­the rage for blood and lust to mangle and tear—­burst from the thicket on their right.  A wild plunge through tangled brush and limbs, another more appalling shriek, and a dark, shadowy form, with a fierce, hungry growl, crouched in the pathway just before them, with its yellow, tawny, cruel eyes flashing in their faces.