“Sit down!” she cried softly.  “Sit down, and listen!”

Was it fancy, or did her eyes turn with almost a prayer in them to the box against the wall?  Philip’s heart was beating like a drum.  That one word he knew was intended for him.

“Sit down,” she repeated, as Hodges hesitated.  “Sit down—­there—­and I will sit here.  Before—­before you touch me, I want an understanding.  You will let me talk, and listen—­listen!”

Again that one word—­“listen!"-Philip knew was intended for him.

The chief had dropped into his chair, and his visitor seated herself opposite him, with her face toward Philip.  She flung back the fur from about her shoulders, and took off her fur turban, so that the light of the big hanging lamp fell full upon the glory of her hair, and set off more vividly the ivory pallor of her cheeks, in which a short time before Philip had seen the rich crimson glow of life, and something that was not fear.

“We must come to an understanding,” she repeated, fixing her eyes steadily upon the man before her.  “I would sacrifice my life for him—­for my husband—­and you are demanding that I do more than that.  I must be sure of the reward!”

Hodges leaned forward eagerly, as if about to speak, but she interrupted him.

“Listen!” she cried, a fire beginning to burn through the whiteness of her cheeks.  “It was you who urged him to come up here when, through misfortune, we lost our little home down in Marion.  You offered him work, and he accepted it, believing you a friend.  He still thought you a friend when I knew that you were a traitor, planning and scheming to wreck his life, and mine.  He would not listen when I spoke to him, without arousing his suspicions, of my abhorrence of you.  He trusted you.  He was ready to fight for you.  And you—­you—­”

In her excitement the young woman’s hands gripped the edges of the table.  For a few moments her breath seemed to choke her, and then she continued, her voice trembling with passion.

“And you—­you followed me about like a serpent, making every hour of my life one of misery, because he believed in you, and I dared not tell him.  So I kept it from him—­until that night you came to our cabin when he was away, and dared to take me in your arms, to kiss me, and I—­I told him then, and he hunted you down and would have killed you if there hadn’t been others near to give you help.  My God, I love him more because of that!  But I was wrong.  I should have killed you!”

She stopped, her breath breaking in a sob.

With a sudden movement Hodges sprang from his chair and came toward her, his face flushed, his lips smiling; but, quicker than he, Thorpe’s wife was upon her feet, and from his prison Philip saw the rapid rising and falling of her bosom, the threatening fire in her beautiful eyes as she faced him.

“Ah, but you are beautiful!” he heard the man say.