shouldn't think you'd want to stir up that trouble after all this
while," he said. "But women are queer. I can't see, myself, why you'd
want to bother hunting me up on account of--that."

Jean weighed his words, his look, his manner, and got no clue at all to
what was going on back of his eyes. On the surface, he was just a
tanned, fairly good-looking young man who has been reluctantly drawn
into an unpleasant subject.

"Well, I did consider it worth while bothering to hunt you up," she
told him flatly. "If you don't think it's important, you at least
won't object to going back with me?"

Again his glance went to her face, plainly startled. "Go back with
you?" he repeated. "What for?"

"Well--" Jean still had some trouble with her breath and to keep her
quiet, smooth drawl, "let's make it a woman's reason. Because."

Art's face settled to a certain hardness that still was not hostile.
"Becauses don't go," he said. "Not with a girl like you; they might
with some. What do you want me to go back for?"

"Well, I want you to go because I want to clear things up, about Johnny
Croft. It's time--it was cleared up."

Art regarded her fixedly. "Well, I don't see yet what's back of that
first BECAUSE," he sparred. "There's nothing I can do to clear up
anything."

"Art, don't lie to me about it. I know--"

"What do you know?" Art's eyes never left her face, now. They seemed
to be boring into her brain. Jean began to feel a certain confusion.
To be sure, she had never had any experience whatever with fugitive
murderers; but no one would ever expect one to act like this. A little
more, she thought resentfully, and he would be making her feel as if
she were the guilty person. She straightened herself and stared back
at him.

"I know you left because you--you didn't want to stay and face-things.
I--I have felt as if I could kill you, almost, for what you have done.
I--I don't see how you can SIT there and--and look at me that way."
She stopped and braced herself. "I don't want to argue about it. I
came here to make you go back and face things. It's--horrible--" She
was thinking of her father then, and she could not go on.

"Jean, you're all wrong. I don't know what idea you've got, but you
may as well get one or two things straight. Maybe you do feel like
killing me; but I don't know what for. I haven't the slightest notion
of going back; there's nothing I could clear up, if I did go."

Jean looked