whisper.

"Don't try to read a misunderstanding into my words," said he, his
voice shaking. Then he seemed to break his stiff, controlled pose as
if it had been a coating of ice, and expand into a trembling,
white-hot man in a moment. "God's name, girl! Say something, say
something! You know where that glove was found?"

"No; and I shall not ask you, Major King."

"But I demand of you to know how it came in that man's possession!
Tell me that--tell me!"

He stood before her, very near to her. His hands were shaking, his
eyes gleaming with fury.

"I might ask you with as much reason how it came in yours," she told
him, resentful of his angry demand.

"A messenger arrived with it an hour ago."

"For you, Major King?"

"For me, certainly."

She had no need to ask him whence the messenger came. She could see
the horsemen returning to the ranchhouse by the river in the gray
morning light, in the triumph of their successful hunt. Alan Macdonald
had fallen. It had been Nola's hand that had dispatched this evidence
of what she could but guess to be the disloyalty of Frances to her
betrothed. If Nola had hoped to make a case with the major, Frances
felt she had succeeded better than she knew.

"Then there is nothing more to be said, Major King," said she, after a
little wait.

"There is much more," he insisted. "Tell me that he snatched the glove
from you, tell me that you lost it--tell me anything, and I'll believe
you--but tell me something!"

"There is nothing to tell you," said she, resentful of the meddling of
Nola Chadron, which his own light conduct with her had in a manner
justified.

"Then I can only imagine the truth," he told her, bitterly. "But
surely you didn't give him the glove, surely you cannot love that wolf
of the range, that cattle thief, that murderer!"

"You have no right to ask me that," she said, flashing with
resentment.

"I have a right to ask you that, to ask you more; not only to ask, but
to demand. And you must answer. You forget that you are my affianced
wife."

"But you are not my confessor, for all that."

"God's name!" groaned King, his teeth set, his eyes staring as if he
had gone mad. "Will you shame us both? Do you forget you are _my
affianced wife?_"

"That is ended--you are free!"

"Frances!" he cried, sharply, as in despair of one sinking, whom he
was powerless to save.

"It is at an end between us, Major King. My 'necessity' of explaining
everything, or anyth