hington," she replied.

"Folks say it's only a matter of time," said he. "Made up your mind to
take him, Cynthy? M-made up your mind?"

"You've no right to talk to me in this way," she said, and added, the
words seeming to slip of themselves from her lips, "Why do you do it?"

"Because I'm--interested," he said.

"You haven't shown it," she flashed back, forgetting the place, and the
storm, and her errand even, forgetting that Jake Wheeler, or any one in
Coniston, might come and surprise her there.

He took a step toward her, and she retreated. The light struck her face,
and he bent over her as though searching it for a sign. The cape on her
shoulders rose and fell as she breathed.

"'Twahn't charity, Cynthy--was it? 'Twahn't charity?"

"It was you who called it such," she answered, in a low voice.

A sleet-charged gust hurled itself against the door, and the lantern
flickered.

"Wahn't it charity."

"It was friendship, Jethro. You ought to have known that, and you should
not have brought back the book."

"Friendship," he repeated, "y-you said friendship?"

"Yes."

"M-meant friendship?"

"Yes," said Cynthia, but more faintly, and yet with a certain delicious
fright as she glanced at him shyly. Surely there had never been a
stranger man! Now he was apparently in a revery.

"G-guess it's because I'm not good enough to be anything more," he
remarked suddenly. "Is that it?"

"You have not tried even to be a friend," she said.

"H-how about Worthington?" he persisted. "Just friends with him?"

"I won't talk about Mr. Worthington," cried Cynthia, desperately, and
retreated toward the lantern again.

"J-just friends with Worthington?"

"Why?" she asked, her words barely heard above the gust, "why do you want
to know?"

He came after her. It was as if she had summoned some unseen,
uncontrollable power, only to be appalled by it, and the mountain-storm
without seemed the symbol of it. His very voice seemed to partake of its
strength.

"Cynthy," he said, "if you'd took him, I'd have killed him. Cynthy, I
love you--I want you to be my woman--"

"Your woman!"

He caught her, struggling wildly, terror-stricken, in his arms, beat down
her hands, flung back her hood, and kissed her forehead--her hair, blown
by the wind--her lips. In that moment she felt the mystery of heaven and
hell, of all kinds of power. In that moment she was like a seed flying in
the storm above the mountain spruces whither, she kn