“Nap!”

He came, gliding like a shadow behind her.  Slowly she turned and faced him.

He was still in riding-dress.  She heard again the faint jingle of his spurs.  Yet the moonlight shone strangely down upon him, revealing in him something foreign, something incongruous, that she marvelled that she had never before noticed.  The fierce, dusky face with its glittering eyes and savage mouth was oddly unfamiliar to her, though she knew it all by heart.  In imagination she clothed him with the blanket and moccasins of Capper’s uncouth speech; and she was afraid.

She did not know how to break the silence.  The heart within her was leaping like a wild thing in captivity.

“Why are you here?” she said at last, and she knew that her voice shook.

He answered her instantly, with a certain doggedness.  “I want to know what Capper has been saying to you.”

She started almost guiltily.  Her nerves were on edge that night.

“You may as well tell me,” he said coolly.  “Sooner or later I am bound to know.”

With an effort she quieted her agitation.  “Then it must be later,” she said.  “I cannot stay to talk with you now.”

“Why not?” he said.

Desperately she faced him, for her heart still quaked within her.  The shock of Capper’s revelation was still upon her.  He had come to her too soon.  “Nap,” she said, “I ask you to leave me, and I mean it.  Please go!”

But he only drew nearer to her, and she saw that his face was stern.  He thrust it forward, and regarded her closely.

“So,” he said slowly, “he has told you all about me, has he?”

She bent her head.  It was useless to attempt to evade the matter now.

“I am mightily obliged to him,” said Nap.  “I wanted you to know.”

Anne was silent.

After a moment he went on.  “I meant to have told you myself.  I even began to tell you once, but somehow you put me off.  It was that night at Baronmead—­you remember?—­the night you wanted to help me.”

Well she remembered that night—­the man’s scarcely veiled despair, his bitter railing against the ironies of life.  So this had been the meaning of it all.  A thrill of pity went through her.

“Yes,” he said.  “I knew you’d be sorry for me.  I guess pity is about the cheapest commodity on the market.  But—­you’ll hardly believe it—­I don’t want your pity.  After all, a man is himself, and it can’t be of much importance where he springs from—­anyway, to the woman who loves him.”

He spoke recklessly, and yet she seemed to detect a vein of entreaty in his words.  She steeled her heart against it, but it affected her none the less.

“Nap,” she said firmly, “there must be no more talk of love between us.  I told you this afternoon that I would not listen, and I will not.  Do you understand me?  It must end here and now.  I am in earnest.”

“You don’t say!” said Nap.