“Hadn’t you heard?  You seem to know so much about the office.  We’re going to build up the basement and set the press just inside the front wall and then cut a big window through so that the world and his wife can see the ‘Clarion’ in the very act of making them better.”

Both fell silent.  Their hands still clung.  Their eyes were fixed upon the fire.  Suddenly a log, half-consumed, crashed down, sending abroad a shower of sparks.  The girl darted swiftly up to stamp out a tiny flame at her feet.  Standing, she half turned toward Hal.

“Where are you going?” she asked.

“To New York.”

“Take me with you.”

So quietly had the crisis come that he scarcely realized it.  For a measured space of heart-beats he gazed into the fireplace.  As he stared, she slipped to the arm of his chair.  He felt the alluring warmth of her body against his shoulder.  Then he would have turned to search her eyes, but, divining him, she denied, pressing her cheek close against his own.

“No; no!  Don’t look at me,” she breathed.

“You don’t know what you mean,” he whispered.

“I do!  I’m not a child.  Take me with you.”

“It means ruin for you.”

“Ruin!  That’s a word!  Words don’t frighten me.”

“They do me.  They’re the most terrible things in the world.”

She laughed at that.  “Is it the word you’re afraid of, or is it me?” she challenged.  “I’m not asking you anything.  I don’t want you to marry me.  Oh!” she cried with a sinking break of the voice, “do you think I’m bad?”

Freeing himself, he caught her face between his hands.

“Are you—­have you been ‘bad,’ as you call it?”

“I don’t blame you for asking—­after what I’ve said.  But I haven’t.”

“And now?”

“Now, I care.  I never cared before.  It was that, I suppose, kept me straight.  Don’t you care for me—­a little, Hal?”

He rose and strode to the window.  When he turned from his long look out into the burgeoning spring she was standing silent, expectant.  Like stone she stood as he came back, but her arms went up to receive him.  Her lips melted into his, and the fire of her face flashed through every vein.

“And afterward?” he said hoarsely.

There was triumph in her answering laughter, passion-shaken though it was.

“Then you’ll take me with you.”

“But afterward?” he repeated.

Lingeringly she released herself.  “Let that take care of itself.  I don’t care for afterward.  We’re free, you and I. What’s to hinder us from doing as we please?  Who’s going to be any the worse for it?  Oh, I told you I was lawless.  It’s the Hardscrabbler blood in me, I guess.”

Deep in Hal’s memory a response to that name stirred.

“Somewhere,” he said, “I have run across a Hardscrabbler before.”

“Me.  But you’ve forgotten.”

“Have I?  Let me see.  It was in the old days when Dad and I were traveling.  You were the child with the wonderful red hair, the night I was hurt. Were you?”