im
down a spell for it."

He was fascinated by her naked, shapely arm; it was slender at the wrist,
and surprisingly round above, at a soft, brown shadow. He was seized by a
desire to touch it, and he held her pointed elbow while he examined the
bruises more minutely. "That's bad," he pronounced; "on that pretty skin,
too." He was confused by the close proximity of her bare flesh, the pulse
in his neck beat visibly.

For a moment she stood motionless; then, with her eyes half closed, sulky,
she drew away from him and rearranged her sleeve.

The brush ended on a slope where pine trees had covered the ground with a
glossy mat of bronzed needles; and his companion sank to a sitting
position with her back against a trunk. They were outside the influence of
the camp meeting, beyond its unnatural excitation. The pine trees were
black against the brilliant day; they might have been cast in iron, there
was no suggestion of growth in the dun covering below; it was as
seasonless where they sat as the sea; the air, faintly spiced and still,
seemed to have lain unchanged through countless ages.

Meta Beggs sat motionless, with a look of inexpressible boredom on her
pale countenance. Her hands, Gordon thought, were like folded buds of the
mountain magnolia.

She said, unexpectedly, "You're rich now, aren't you, one of the richest
men in the county?"

"Why I--I got some money; that is, my wife has."

She dismissed, with an impatient gesture, the distinction. "Money is
life," she continued, with a perceptible, envious longing, "it's freedom,
all the things worth having. It makes women--it's their leather boxes full
of rings and pins and necklaces, their dresses of all-over lace, their
silk and hand scalloped and embroidered underclothes; it's their
fascination and chance and power--"

"I would like to see you in some of those lace things," he returned.

"Well, get them for me," she answered hardily.

Utterly unprepared for this direct attack he was thoroughly disconcerted.
"Why, certainly!" he replied, laboriously polite, "the next time--I'll do
it!--when I'm in Stenton again I'll bring you a pair of silk stockings."

"Black," she said practically, "and size eight and a half. You will like
me in black silk stockings," she added enigmatically.

"I'll bet," he replied with enthusiasm. "I won't wait to go, but send for
them. You would make the dollars dance. You are different from--" he was
going to say Lettice, but, instin