"I won't marry him!" she cried out. "I won't. I hate him. He is a beast,
and--I won't!"

There was, after all, nothing to force her. Nothing--save that she had
been away all this time with Gratton, that he had bought clothing for
her, that he had registered himself and wife. _And the newspapers_! She
heard a door slam and sprang up; if the justice went away now without
marrying them! She _would_ marry him; why, if he had been of a notion to
demur she would have made him marry her!

"I can't think clearly. I wonder if I am insane?" She went with heavy,
leaden steps back to her room. A pale, weary face looked at her from her
glass. She began arranging her hair. Her fingers, with wills of their
own, refused to obey her own command laid upon them. She sought wildly
to delay, delay to the last fragment of the last second before yielding
to the inevitable; she wanted to loiter over her hair, and her fingers
raced. She could hear voices downstairs. Gratton's voice, low and
urgent; a thin, querulous voice; she shuddered. That would be the
justice. Another voice, a man's and strange to her. He said nothing,
but twice she heard him laugh, a laugh that jarred upon her nerves. She
guessed who he would be; the man Gratton had sent to bring the justice.

"Gloria!" Gratton was calling from the foot of the steps.

The voice that answered for her was clear and steady and, downstairs,
must have sounded untroubled:

"I'm coming. Just a minute."

* * * * *

Two hours ago, while Gloria had been watching the shadows creeping among
the pines, Mark King had arrived. He had come down the ridge from the
rear and thus to the outbuilding by the stable which housed the
caretaker, old Jim Spalding.

"Hello, Mark," Jim had said, a trifle startled by King's sudden
appearance. "Here you come again, like a Injun out'n the woods."

Jim was smoking his pipe on his bench. King paused, saying:

"Hello, Jim. Has Ben showed up yet?"

"No, he ain't showed, Mark. Expectin' him?"

"Yes. Who's in the house, then?"

"Why, some of 'em come on ahead. Ben's girl, for one, and that city guy,
Gratton, for another. She didn't say anything about Ben comin'; she did
say, though, the missis would be along pretty soon."

Gloria and Gratton here? King frowned. He had had ample time during the
long weeks since the twelfth of August to decide that he had nothing to
say to Gloria Gaynor. And now she was here--with Gratton. He turn