house as skilfully as it could have been done under a more artificial régime, and as he wandered down the cart track toward the main road, he glanced back at each turn with the dual question whether he had done rightly in leaving them together and how, in all conscience, he could have done differently. He imagined he had read a protest in the girl's eyes, yet she had neither objected to his leaving nor proposed by any word to accompany him. It was the more intolerable because he was not quite certain that the girl understood she ought not to stay.

WHILE

CHAPTER VIII

THE QUARREL

HILE Barnaby was within possible range of voice, Ashgrave remained at the window watching the drenched meadows and saying nothing. The girl had cleared the table and was washing the dishes, with a nervous quickness that was clearly anticipatory. At last Ashgrave turned, slowly, with no note of sudden anger either in voice or manner. He seemed following a part he had determined in advance.

"Well?"

She turned from the dish-pan, holding a plate in her hand, with an assumed air of not forecasting, which was denied by the drawn lines of her forehead.

"Well?" he repeated, more sharply and dominantly. "Well. What?"

"You 've met him before."

She turned to her dish-pan and flung back over her shoulder,

"I saw him on the road yesterday."

He took two strides across the kitchen, and seizing her by the shoulder turned her sharply until he looked down into her eyes. A sudden flame of anger swept into his face, the more appalling because without apparent

cause.

"Let me alone, Joe Ashgrave!" She deepened her voice, but without increasing the volume. It was as if she held her anger under the dominance of an impulse to plead, rather than storm.

"I'll let you alone when I know the truth and not before," he retorted. "You've seen him before you saw him yesterday."

"It's none of your business, if I have." The perversity of unreason seized her, and the recognition of his brutality impelled her to refuse to appease him.

He tightened his grip on her shoulder till she grew pale with pain, and then with a sudden thrust sent her spinning into a chair that stood by the fireplace. The cup she held in her hand fell on the hearth and broke into a score of bits.

a

"You 're a strumpet!" he cried. "You're a woman!" His voice rose almost to a bellow, and the scorn he threw into the last word had all the sting and insult of the gross word he had been on the point of using.

She looked on him from her chair, the pain still torturing her face, and gathered herself to fling back the insult, as she knew she could. The sense of fear was gone, and with it the disposition to plead. There seemed an instinct in her voice that held it to tones rather below than above the ordinary.

"You are a man; a man, like your father."

His face grew white, under its sunburn, and he started toward her, his hands reaching out and clutching at the air, the fingers bent and quivering, as if he felt within them the soft whiteness of her throat. She watched him without an effort to avoid him, but when he was within a yard of her she suddenly asked:

"Is that the way your father killed your mother?"

He staggered, as if it were a blow and not words he had met. He threw up his hands to his face and, dropping into a chair, let his head fall heavily to the table.

She sat and looked at him as if she were studying

some strange creature. After a pause, without a show of passion or resentment in her voice, she said:

"When you can be sensible, we 'll talk." It was her way of saying that she had thrown this at him as her weapon of defence, not as implying any shame to him. Now that she had conquered and was through with it, they could turn to things that concerned them. Without experience to measure the effect of her mood, she showed him the indifference his anger had for her, and so touched the quick of his personal pride more deeply than had the slurs upon his father.

Slowly he raised his head and the flame of his anger turned to sensual passion. A savage joy thrilled him that he had her in his power, and that as he willed so must she be. It was the brute breaking bounds, yet glad with the intelligence of man in the fallen shackles.

"You play with me!" he said, sharply, yet with a depth that mere sharpness lightened without revealing.

She caught the changed tone, and something in it or in his lifted face warned her of danger. She ceased to play the indifferent, while every faculty became alert for her defence.

"You play with yourself," she said. married

yet."

"We're not

"You'll wish we were, when this day is over," and through the bellow the animality of the beast alone vibrated.

The very atmosphere seemed charged to danger. She was afraid of him; she was afraid of herself. Something of herself seemed to answer this cry of strength and desire and, without destroying the wish to resist, to paralyse the will. She fled to weakness, where the cover of strength was lacking.

"I've had no wish in that matter but yours," she said, with a dim purpose of delay.

"You lie!" he said. "You know you 've been afraid; and you had reason to be." He had risen and was standing over her, his muscles twitching, his nostrils wide and his breathing heavy and quick. She was so weak; it was all that kept him from seizing her.

"No, I have n't feared you," she said, and she held her eye on his, master of herself to that extent for the moment. "I have loved you."

"You don't know what love means,' "" he answered. "If you had, you 'd been mine long ago."

"Look!" she cried and pointed to the window. A shadow seemed to pass it, and he sprang to shoot the bolt. On the instant, she leaped from her chair and, with the strength of a country-bred girl, pushed the kitchen-table down upon him. Then she darted through the door into the next room and, before he could reach it, shot the bolt.

He stood a moment in the chagrin of his defeat and then found in resistance new incitement.

'Mandy," he cried, through the door, "you did n't think I meant to hurt you, did you?"

"I know you did," came the answer. killed your mother, and you would me."

"Your father

His anger came up again at this taunt, battling with and yet inciting lust; but he held himself to his new plan, though the second passion asserted itself in his tone: "No, no! I did n't mean to kill you. I love you too

much."

"But it would have killed me. You know that. I'm going now."

"Don't 'Mandy, till you 've opened the door and said you don't believe I 'd hurt you."