little hotly. "Couldn't you tell that
the fool has money?"

"I didn't like him," she said.

"Ho, you didn't like him!" His tone drove a little higher colour into
her face, but she kept the serene indifference in her half-smile. "But
you did dine with me . . . because you liked me, no doubt!"

"Let us say," she replied a trifle wearily, her eyes going back to the
river, "that I was lonely; and that I was prepared to like you, Mr.
Drennen."

He found himself in a sudden flaring anger. The anger was
unreasonable, but it but burned the hotter for all that. He had sought
to take a joy out of being brutal to the girl, just why he was very far
from understanding. Now the joy did not come as he had expected it.
In his anger there was a sense of insane resentment against her that
she was just a girl, not a man as he would have her now so that he
might give her the lie and make her suffer physically by beating at her
with his hard fists. In the blind rage upon him he blamed her for
having come into his life at all even though she were merely a passing
figure through a little corner of it. The years, while they had
brought no happiness to him, had at least given him a calm indifference
to all things; now for many days and nights she had broken that calm.
In his heart he cursed her, his emotion rising toward a fierce,
passionate hatred.

"In hell's name," he cried abruptly, his voice ringing with a new
menace in it, "what are you doing here? Why don't you go on? What are
you staying here for? Is the world so damned small that you've got to
come and preen yourself under my eyes?"

For a moment she did not answer. The expression in the eyes turned
upon him changed swiftly. There was a quick fear, gone in a flash in
pure wonder. All this he saw clearly as too he saw a flicker of
amusement. And back of the amusement which maddened him were other
things, emotions hinted darkly, baffling him.

"The other day," she said steadily in the face of his rage, "you
contented yourself by commanding me to take myself off of the mountain
back there. Now you request me to get out of Canada? Or out of
America? Or the western hemisphere, which is it? And, kind sir, _why_
is it?"

Looking up at him, to show him how little he moved her, to make him
doubt if he had read aright when he had thought it was fear in her
eyes, she laughed. The laughter, welling up softly, musically, from
deep in the round white throat, the defia