She would not eat at first and he did not insist upon her doing so, but

sat comfortably, and in a moment was smacking his lips.  The coffee was
excellent--the best that could be had in Alenon, and its odor was
delicious.  He saw from where he sat her eyes shifting uncertainly.  He
drained his cup with a great sigh of content, set it down upon the
saucer and was in the act of pouring out another helping for himself
when she rose and reached forward quickly, appetite triumphant.

"I'd better eat, I suppose," she said jerkily.

He smiled politely and handed her the sandwiches, noting from the tail
of his eye that several times during the meal her look sought his face
for an explanation of his change of manner, which, not being
forthcoming, she sat rather demurely at her meat, emptying the pot of
coffee and finishing the last of the bread and chicken.  Markham would
have smiled if he had dared!  What chance had any of the lighter
passions against the craving hunger of the healthy young animal?  It
was another triumph of his philosophy, almost its greatest--Nature at a
bound eliminating art and the feminine calculus.  When he had finished
eating, without a word he rose, and went out to pack Clarissa, and
while he was thus engaged Hermia passed him silently with a bucket on
the way to the pump for water, and in another moment he was aware that
she was washing the dishes.  He made no effort to help her, but sat on
the door-sill, thoughtfully smoking his pipe.

She came out in a moment and announced that she was ready to go, and he
saw that breakfast had done her no harm.  So they followed Olga
Tcherny's instructions as far as he remembered them and found a path
through the woods which led northward.  Clarissa had so gorged herself
with the stolen fodder (which may have been sweeter on that account)
that Markham had to cut a new goad to speed her upon her way.  They
kept a watch ahead and behind them, and emerged as Olga had prophesied
without adventure or accident through a hole in a hedge upon a
highroad, along which, still bending their steps northward, they took
their way.

Markham's silence had a double meaning.  They were at odds just now.  A
while back Hermia had starved for food.  He meant now that she should
starve for company.  He wanted to think, too, to analyze and weigh his
own culpability in the situation where they now found themselves.  The
imprudence of their venture had not seemed to matter so much back at
Evreux, where accident had thrown them together and Hermia had linked
her fate to his.  She had been little more to him then than an
extraordinarily interesting specimen of a genus he little understood, a
rebellious slave of convention who had shown him the shackles which
galled her wrists and had pleaded with him very prettily to help her
strike them off.  Could any man have refused her?  And yet he had known
from that hour that a retribution of some sort awaited them
both--Hermia, for ignoring her code; himself, for having permitted her
to ignore it.  There was a difference now--a difference which their
discovery by an outsider had made unpleasantly manifest.  De Folligny's
appearance at Verneuil had made Markham thoughtful, but Olga's
intrusion now had paraphrased their pastoral lyric into unworthy prose.
Parnassus wept with them, but no amount of weeping could destroy the
ugly doggerel as Olga had written it.  Their idyl was smirched, the
fair robe of _Euterpe_ was trialing in the dust.

But it was too late for reproaches now.  The mischief was done and one
thing only left--to emerge with as good a grace as possible from a
doubtful position.  As the moments passed it became more clear to
Markham in which way his duty lay--and the more he thought of it, the
more he was convinced that it lay out of Vagabondia.  Hermia must
go--this very day--and he--to beard their pretty tigress.

The shadow of his thoughts fell upon his brows, and to Hermia, who
watched him, when she could do so unobserved, he presented a
countenance upon which gloom sat heavily enthroned.

Had he spoken his thoughts as they came to him she could not have read
him more easily; and, as Markham gloomed, her own mood lightened.
Though she spoke not, a dull fire slumbered in her eye which boded him
mischief.  Disaster had befallen--and some one was to pay for it; but
his bent head was unaware of the smile that suddenly grew, a pale
wintry smile which matched the devil in her eyes.

They camped in the mellow afternoon under the trees upon a rugged
mountain that guarded the defile, through which a rushing torrent, one
of the tributaries of the Oire, dashed over the rocks on its swift
course to Argentan.  Below them in the valley were a village and a
railroad along which a tiny passenger train was slowly proceeding.
Markham eyed the train with a grave and melancholy interest.  They both
observed that it stopped in the village to let off and take on
passengers.  He built his fire with great deliberateness, gloomy and
silent as though performing a last rite for one departed, and ate
solemnly, his face long.

At last she could stand the stress of him no longer and burst suddenly
into a fit of laughter which echoed madly among the rocks.

"Oh, John Markham!" she cried.  "Why so _triste_?  The melancholy
sweetness of seeing Olga again?"

"No," he replied calmly.  "I was thinking--of other things."

"What?"

A smile broke over his lips.  He had been right.  There was nothing in
the world that a woman has greater pains to endure than silence.  He
had starved her out.

He didn't reply at once, and that angered her.

"Must I plead with you even for speech?" she asked satirically.  "Has
it come to this?  Will you not smile and throw a crumb of comfort to
your bond-woman?"

"I have had nothing to say--until now," he replied, very quietly, over
his coffee cup.

She only laughed at him and swept the ground with a low curtsey.

"Thy slave listens.  Speak!  To what decision has my lord and master
arrived?" she asked.

He swallowed his coffee deliberately, unsmiling, his gaze over the
valley where the railroad track wormed its way into the North.

"That you're to go to your friends in Paris--at once," he said
decisively.

And while she watched him scornfully, the slow fire in her eyes burning
suddenly into brightness, he took from his pocket a wallet he had never
seen before, and counted out upon the ground some money.

"This," he continued calmly, "is yours.  You have earned it.  I have
kept count.  I will owe you, too--what is realized from the sale of--of
Clarissa.  Or, if you prefer it, I will pay you that now.  I hope you
will find the arrangement satisfactory."

He had arrested her mockery and she stood silent while he spoke, her
gaze upon the ground.  But her mood broke forth again with even greater
virulence.

"So you want to be ride of me, _Monsieur mon Ma”tre--cancel my
indentures--end my apprenticeship to the school of life--turn me adrift
in a wicked world, which already treats me none too kindly.  Is it
wise, I say?  Is it kind, is it human--just because a woman crosses our
path and threatens my reputation?  Look at me.  Am I not the same that
I was before?  Now have I fallen in your graces?  You, who professed a
while ago to love me--oh, so madly?"

He was silent and would not look at her.

"Or is it _me_ that you fear, _mon cher_?" she taunted him.  "Is it
that I've learned too well your lessons?  That I've foresworn the
conventions which stifled me, the code which enslaved me, that I've
earned at last my right to live unbound, untrammeled--with no code but
the love of life, no law but that of my own instincts--is it because of
this that you deny me?  O John Markham!  What becomes of your fine
philosophy?  And of your natural laws?  Do they fall, with me, before
the first challenge from the world they profess to ignore?  It is to
laugh."

While she vented her joy of him he rose and faced her, but she did not
flinch.  Her voice only dropped a tone, and now derided, mocked and
cajoled.

"Do you fear me so much, _Monsieur le Ma”tre_?" she laughed.  "Is it
that I love you too much to love you wisely?  Why should _you_ care,
_mon ami_?  Is it not the lot of women to give--always to give?"

Still he turned away from her, his hands fast in his pockets, but a
warning murmur broke from his lips.  She did not hear it and, coming
around behind him, clasped her fingers upon his arms.

"If I tell you that I do not love you, _mon ami_, will not that be
enough--enough to satisfy you that my happiness is not in danger?  If I
do not love you, what can you fear for me?  Why should I care what the
world thinks of us?  Have I reproached you?  Did I not give myself into
your keeping, without--"

He turned and caught her into his arms and stopped her mockery with
kisses, the man in him triumphant, while she struggled, her lips denied
him, dumb and quivering in his arms.

"Now perhaps you know----why it is that you must go," he whispered.
"Read it here.  I'm mad for you, Hermia--that is why.  I can't any
longer be with you without reaching forth to take you----you're mine by
every law of God or Nature.  Philosophy!  Who cares?  Your lips have
babbled it.  Let them babble it now--if they dare--"

"Let me go, Philidor," she gasped.

"No, not yet.  I've much to say and only this hour to say it in, for in
a while you shall go and I will stay with Pan and mourn.  The woods
will sigh of you, for you will be a nymph no longer.  But before you go
you shall look love in the eyes and see--love full grown and
masterful--here among the everlasting rocks--love so great that you
shall be afraid and mock not.  Look up.  Look in my eyes--"

"No!  No!"

"You love me."

"No!"

"You love me."

"N--no!"

As she protested he took her lips, pale lips that would have mocked
again, yet dared not, for her eyes had stolen a glance through
half-closed lashes and learned that what he said was true.  The warm
color flooded upward, staining crimson beneath the tan, and her body
which had relaxed for a moment under the gust of his ardor protested
anew.

"Let me go, Philidor.  I-It must not be--can't you understand?  Would
you justify them--what they say of us?  Oh, let me go.  Let me--"

She wrenched away from him and stood gasping, Olga Tcherny's last
laughter singing in her ears.

"You've justified her--justified her," she almost sobbed, "robbed me of
my right to look her in the eyes--as I could do this morning.  Why did
you kiss me--like that--Philidor?  Oh, you've spoiled it all--spoiled
it for us both.   Why couldn't you have let things be--as they were--so
gentle--so sweet--so sane!"

"You mocked at love," he muttered.

"Oh, that I should have misjudged you so.  You who were so strong--so
kind!  Who ruled me with gentleness!  and now--"

"You've tried me too far."

She had; and she knew it.  There was nothing for it but to skurry for
the wings of convention.  Alas, for Pan!  Hermia was a nymph no
longer--only a girl of the cities, upon the defensive for the security
of her traditions.  She drew aside and sank breathless upon a rock.

"Love is not so ruthless--it does not shock or sear, John Markham," she
gasped.

"I've served you patiently--and long," he muttered.

"A week."

"It's enough."

"No."

"You'll marry me."

She raised her head and met his eyes fairly.

"No. I refuse you."

He could not understand.

"You--"

"I refuse to marry you.  Is that clear?" she cried.

What had come over her?  The warm color had flooded back to her heart
and her eyes were cold like dead embers.

"I won't believe you," he said doggedly.

"You must.  It was a mistake--all this--a mistake from the first.  I
was made to have followed you.  You should have denied me--then--back
there--"

"I loved you then--I know it now--and you--"

"No--not love, John Markham," she went on.  "If you had loved me you
would have sent me back to Paris--and saved me from--from myself.  You
loved me then, you say," she laughed scornfully.  "What kind of love is
this that slinks in hiding, preaches of friendship for its own ends and
rants of philosophy?  What kind of love that scoffs at public opinion
and finds itself at last a topic of amusement at a fashionable dining
table?  A selfish love, a nameless love from which all tenderness, all
gentleness and beauty--"

"Hermia!"  He had caught her by the shoulders and held her gaze with
his own.

"Let me go.  It's true.  And you ask me to marry you.  Why should you
marry me when you can win my lips without it?"

She laughed up at him, a hard little laugh, like a buffet in his face.
Still he held her--away from him.

"Your lips are mine," he said gently, "I could take them now--again and
again.  But I will not.  See, I am all tenderness again.  Your words
cannot harm me--nor yourself.  For love is greater than either of us.
It is the secret you once asked of me, the secret of life.  I've told
it to you.  I tell it to you now--when I let you go."

Her color came and went and her eyes drooped before him.  He dropped
his hands, turned his back and walked away.

"That is my reply," he said softly.

Could he have seen the glory that rode suddenly in her eyes as she
looked at him, he would have read the heart of her.  But that was not
to be.  Followed a silence.  He would not trust himself again.  The
embers of their fire still smoked.  With his foot he crushed them out.

"You will go, at once, to Paris," he said quietly, not looking at her.

She did not move, or reply, and only watched him as he made the
preparations for departure.  They went down the hill to the village in
silence, Markham leading Clarissa at his side.  At the _gare_ a train
was due in half an hour, and so they sat and waited, looking straight
before them, no word passing, and when the train came he found a
compartment and put her in it, with her bundle, then stood with head
uncovered, until a stain of smoke above the trees was all that remained
to him.  Presently that, too, vanished, when soberly he took up his
cudgel and went his way.


CHAPTER XXIII

A LADY IN THE DUSK

Halfway between the turbid currents of the lower city and the more
swiftly running streams to the northward sits Washington Square, an
isle of rest amid the tides of humanity which lap its shores.

Here is the true gateway to the city--below it the polyglot of Europe;
above, the amalgam which makes America.  It is a neighborhood of
traditions which speak in the aspect of the solidly built row of houses
facing to the south, breasting the living surge, its front unbroken.
This park, with its stretch of green, its dusky maples and shaded
benches, afforded asylum to Markham, the painter, who liked to come
when the day's work was over and watch the shadows fall across the
square, creeping slowly up the walls of the Arch, bringing into higher
relief the rosy tints on cornice and medallion which remained animate a
moment against the purple filigree beyond, a thing of joy and of
beauty, a symbol of eternal freedom.  He was never sure whether it was
more wonderful then, or when a moment later the golden glory gone from
its cap, it stood silent amid the roar of the city wrapped in pallid
dignity at the end of the glittering Avenue.  That Avenue was a symbol,
too.  It meant the world to which Markham had returned after his
glimpse of Elysium, a world not too kind, already laughing perhaps at
his secret and Hermia's.

His problem still puzzled him.  He had had no word from Olga Tcherny,
though he had sought her in Alenon and Trouville.  She had gone to
Paris, he had been informed, but he had not been able to find her there
in her usual haunts.

Nor had he succeeded in finding Hermia, though he had left no stone
unturned in the search.  He had watched the hotel registers, inquired
at her bankers, and scanned the sailing lists in vain.  Had the earth
engulfed them both they could not have more mysteriously disappeared.

Cables to New York had been unavailing, and at last, his time growing
short, he had sailed from Cherbourg, a sadder but no wiser man.  A call
at the Challoner house at the upper end of the Avenue had only produced
the information that the person he so eagerly sought had not yet
returned, and that, in default of instructions to the contrary, her
mail was forwarded, as before, to Paris.  There was nothing for it but
to wait, and Markham became aware that love, in addition to being all
the things that he and Hermia had described it, was a grievous hunger
which would feed upon no food but itself.  He was quite wretched,
painted abominably by day and prowled in the streets by night, his
disembodied spirit off among the highways of Vagabondia.

November came, and still no letter nor any word of her.  He was
desperate.  Her silence, at first only disappointing, now became
ominous.  Whatever their misunderstandings in the last hour of their
pilgrimage, he deserved something better of her than this.  Here in New
York it already seemed difficult to visualize her.  He could see
nothing but the belled cap and coarse stockings of Yvonne, the "woman
orchestra."  They filled his eye as her essence filled his heart.  The
broadcloth and beaver of her metropolitan sisters puzzled and dismayed
him.  He had only seen her once in town and then she had resembled
nothing so much as a flippant cherub in skirts--an example of how New
York taught the young female idea to shoot.  It hadn't been the kind of
shooting he had liked.  Thimble Island had individualized
her--differently; Westport had given her color; but it was Normandy
that had completed the human document.  She was Hermia, that was all!
But here in New York, with Vagabondia but a memory, he was not sure
that he would know her.  The Avenue was full of young female ideas in
the process of shooting, all dressed very much alike, all flippant, all
cherubic, and he scanned them with a new interest, wondering at the
lapse of circumstance which somehow could not be bridged.  Yvonne
tailor made!  The thing was impossible.

And yet he found it necessary to realize that here in New York it was
to be no Yvonne that he would find.  Her silence, too, now advised him
that she was to be upon the defensive, all her armor bristling with
commonplace, against which the flight of his quiver of memorabilia
might be dented in vain.  How was she thinking of him yonder?  In what
terms?  Did she think of him at all?  His questions had even descended
to that low condition.  He had had such a little share in her life
after all, her real life in the cities, which laid its impress with
such certainty on those who were its children.  He saw the marks of it
all about him, the thing one called "good form," the undercurrent of
strife for social honor, the corrugated brow of envy, the pomp and
circumstance of spilled riches--ah! here was where his shoe would pinch
him the most.  For Hermia Challoner was wealthy beyond the touch of
Midas.  If the Westport house or her taste in automobiles had not been
green in his memory, it only remained to him to view the stately
splendor of the Challoner mansion up town to be reminded that his
vagabond companion of a week rightfully belonged to another world in
which he was only a reluctant and somewhat captious visitor.  Her
riches bewildered him.  They obtruded unbearably, proclaiming their
importance in terms which there was no denying.  Vagabondia, it seemed,
was a forgotten country.

Had Hermia forgotten?  Was his idyl, the one dream of his life, to end
in waking?  Was Hermia's mad excursion but another item in the long
list of entertainments by means of which she exacted from life payment
in diversion which she considered her due?  Had he, Markham, been but
an incident in this entertainment, a humble second-liner like Luigi
Fabiani, who broke stones upon his mighty brother and caught the infant
Stella when she was hurled at him?  The thought was unpleasant to him,
and did his lady no honor--so he dismissed it with reservations.  But,
whatever unction he laid to his soul, the truth would not be downed
that two months had elapsed since that parting in the railway station
at SŽes during which time he had neither heard from nor of her.

One comfort he had when hope was at low ebb--the vision of a pale face
at a trap-door, its eyes wide in concern--Hermia's face when Olga's
fowling piece was discharged; two comforts--the memory of the roses of
Pre GuŽgou!  Both gave him joy--and reconciled him to
her present intolerance which time and an ardor which knew no abating
must wipe away.  If it hadn't been for Olga!

This was a most exasperating _if_, a heart-wracking _if_, an _if_ that
made him pause among the ruins of his ancient friendship.  He could
not believe that it was altogether to chance that he and Hermia owed
Olga's discovery of their strange intimacy.  In his infatuation he had
forgotten that the Ch‰teau de Cahors was near Alenon
and that here was a spot which should at any costs have been avoided.
Hermia must have known, too, and yet it seems they had both rushed to
their danger with heedlessness which deserved no better fate.  But
their pursuit and the certainty with which Olga provided the
culminating drama created a belief, in his own mind, at least, that
had he and Hermia been in Kamschatka, their discomfiture would have
been just as surely accomplished.  If Olga's motives still remained
shrouded in mystery, it was clear that her object had been to bring
their companionship to an end, and this she had done, though not
precisely in the way she had planned.  Hermia hadn't believed that rot
about La Croix and Compigne.  Olga had overshot the mark.  Her
pleasantry with the loaded shotgun had been better aimed and her
frightened game had fallen.  It angered him to think how ruthless had
been her plan, medi¾val in its simplicity, and how successful
she had been in carrying it out.  As to her motives--Hermia had
insisted that Olga wanted to marry him!  Olga and he!

With a muttered word Markham rose from his bench and made his way
toward the Arch.  Its phase of splendor had passed, for the dusk had
fallen swiftly, but its bulk loomed in ghostly grandeur, a solemn
sentinel at the meeting place of East and West.  The street lights were
winking merrily and brougham and limousine passed beneath it, moving
rapidly northward.  With the setting of the sun a chill had fallen on
the wonderful day of Indian summer and people moved briskly on their
homeward way.   Markham buttoned his light overcoat across his chest
and bent his steps in the direction of his apartment, when at the
corner of the Avenue he found his way blocked  by a solitary female
person fashionable attire who for some reason was laughing gaily.

He stopped, awakened suddenly to the fact that the lady of his dreams
was before him.

"O Monsieur Philidor!" she laughed.  "Well met, upon my word!  Have you
waited for me long?"

"Olga!"

"The same--flushed with victory over the passing years, joyous, too, at
the sight of you.  I counted on finding you here."

"I'm delighted--but how--"

"I know your habits, my dear.  You always loved to prowl.  And there
used to be a time, you know, when we prowled together."

He found himself glad to see her--so glad that he forgot how angry he
was.

"Let's prowl then," he said, and turned his steps southward again.

"I suppose you know I've been hunting for you."

"Yes."

She volunteered no more.

"When did you get back?" he asked slowly.

"Tuesday. I wasted no time, you see, in looking for you.  I've just
come from the studio."

"You might have seen me in Normandy if you had cared to."

"Oh, I saw quite enough of you there," she said dryly.  "Besides, I
knew what you wanted.  I wasn't ready to talk to you.  I am now."

He laughed uneasily, sparring for wind.

"What have you to say to me?"

"Much.  I've been thinking, John.  Curious, isn't it?  Wearing, too.
Adversity's sweet milk, philosophy.  Is beauty's ensign yet crimson in
my cheeks?"

"If you weren't sure of it you wouldn't ask me," he laughed.  "Why
didn't you want to see me?"

"I didn't say I didn't want to see you.  I merely suggested that I
didn't think it wise to."

"Why not?"

"You might not have understood my point of view.  You mayn't now.  I
think I was a trifle bewildered over there.  Now I'm clear again,"  She
paused, her gaze focusing quickly, "O John, what a mess you've made of
my ideals!"

"I?" he muttered stupidly, but he knew what she meant.  "What have I to
do with your ideals, Olga?"

"Nothing--except that you gave them birth and then destroyed them.
It's infanticide--nothing less," she said slowly.

He groped for a word, stammered and was silent.

She examined him curiously, then smiled.

"Silence?  Confession!"

"I've nothing to confess."  And then desperately.  "Appearances
are--were against us.  If you've spoken of that--you've done a great
mischief--an irreparable wrong--to--to Hermia."

She was laughing again, silently, inwardly, her head bent.

"Oh, as to that, I'll relieve your anxiety at once," she said at last.
"It was to rich a secret to tell too quickly--too good a story--and
then the embroideries--I had to think of those.  No, I have not told
it, John,--not yet.  You see, after I left you, I changed my mind about
things.  Your rural _amourette_ is still a secret, _mon ami_."

He gasped a sigh of relief.  How could he ever have believed it of her?
He laughed lightly with an air of carelessness.

"You wouldn't tell.  I knew that.  You're not that sort, Olga--"

"Not so fast, my poor friend," she put in quickly.  "I've said that
your indiscretion was still a secret, but I still reserve the right to
tell it here in New York if the humor seizes me."

"Nonsense," he laughed.  "I simply don't believe you would."

She shrugged.

"I have told you the truth. I mean what I say.  I shall tell what I
know, unless--"

She paused.  Her moment was not yet.

"Unless?" he questioned.

"Unless I find reasons why I shouldn't," she finished provokingly.

"Meaning--what?" he persisted.

He regarded her for a moment in silence, quickly joining in her
laughter.

"Oh, what's the use of making such a lot of fuss over a thing?  It was
imprudent, indiscreet of us, if you like.  Hermia and I met by
accident.  I was tramping it--as you know.  I asked her if she didn't
want to go along, and she did.  Simplest thing in the world.  We waved
convention aside.  Nothing odd about that.  We're doing it every day."

"Oh, are we?"

"Yes.  The laws of convention were only made as props and crutches for
the crooked.  If you're straight, you don't need 'em."

"Still," she mused sweetly, "society must be protected.  Who is to tell
which of us is straight and which crooked?  Even if we were crooked,
you know, neither of us would be willing t admit it."

"But it's a question not so much of my wisdom--as of Hermia's.  You'll
admit--"

"I admit nothing," she said quickly.  "You've surprised, shocked and
grieved me beyond words, both of you, also made me feel a trifle
foolish.  My judgment is shaken to the earth.  Here I've been holding
you up as a kind of paragon, a fossilized _Galahad_, with a horizon
just at your elbows, to find you touring France, _faisant l'aimable_
with a frolicsome scapegrace in a bolero jacket."

"I would remind you," he broke in stiffly, "that you're speaking of
Hermia Challoner."

"Oh, I'm quite aware of it," with a careless wave of her hand.  "And as
to Hermia's wisdom--life has taught me this--that a woman may be
clever, she may be intuitive, she may be skillful, but she's never
wise.  And so I say--I'm shocked, John Markham, outraged and shocked
beyond expression."

"Oh, you're the limit, Olga," he blurted out.

"Simply because I adhere to the traditions of my sex, because I adhere
to the memory of my friendships.  I like you, John Markham, your
simplicity has always appealed to me.  And now that you add gallantry
to your more sober charms I confess you're quite irresistible."

Markham stopped short.

"I can't have you talking like this," he said quietly.  "I don't mind
what you say of me, of course, but your choice of words is not
fortunate.  Miss Challoner and I--"

"Spare your breath," she said, turning on him swiftly.  "I'm no fool.
I've lived in the world.  If Hermia Challoner chooses to lay herself
open to criticism that's her lookout.  I'll say what I please of her.
She has earned that retribution.  Talk as you will of your own virtues
and hers you'd never succeed in convincing anyone of your innocence--me
least of all.  What's the use of beating around the bush.  I can see
through a millstone--if it has a hole in it.  Hermia Challoner--"

"Silence!"  His fingers gripper her arm and she stopped, ready to
scream with the pain of it.  "You're insulting the woman I love.  Do
you hear?" he whispered through set lips.  "I'll hear no more of it
here--or elsewhere?  We traveled together, that is all.  My God--that
you should dare!"  He stopped suddenly, peering through the dusk at her
face which still smiled, though the pain of her arm gave her agony, and
then he relaxed with a laugh.  "You don't mean it, I know.  It isn't
worthy of you.  Why, Olga, you are her friend.  You know her
intimately--body and soul.  You can't believe it.  You don't--"

"I do," fiercely.  "I _do_ believe it--more's the pity."

They had stopped and were facing each other, bayonets crossed.  The
city roared about them, but they did not hear it.  He dominated her,
masterful.  She fought back silently, a thing of nerves and passion
only, but she did not flinch, though he had already wounded her
mortally.

"Lie, if you like to me, John Markham.  Lie to me.  It's your duty.
Lie like a gentleman.  But you can't make me believe you.  I'm no fool.
I'll say what I like of her--or of you, when I choose, where I
choose--"

"I won't believe you."

"You must.  It has come to that," she went on, whispering.  "I've given
you the best of me, the very best, what no man has had of me,
affection, strong and tender, friendship, clean and wholesome.  I gave
gladly.  I'm not sorry.  They were sweeter even than the love in my
breast which stifled--which still stifles me."

"Olga!"