o tell you one thing. You won't believe it, but here it is--I
didn't shoot Rood!"

A great weight seemed to slip from my heart. I dropped my hands and
looked up, and instead of darkness, there was his face above me, great,
shadowy hollows for the eyes, and a soft, gray shadow for the mouth.
His hat was thrown aside and I could see a faint light on his forehead.

It seemed like a miracle in the first, wondering moment. The next I
understood what had happened. The quarter moon was rising, and
everything was filmed with her dim silver. For a little I looked up at
him quite contentedly, with a feeling of peace at my heart that I had
not felt since I had first seen him. "Of course I believe you," I
said. "I was only so frightened because in the court you wouldn't
speak, and no one would speak for you and explain how it happened. It
made it seem as if you were the one. That was why every one thought
so."

He smiled rather grimly. "Yes, that is what I supposed."

"But now you will go back, you will tell them how it really happened,
you will be proved innocent?"

"I can't be proved innocent," he answered harshly. "There is nothing
here for me." Yet all the while he looked at me so wistfully that it
was hard to understand.

"But there is I," I said. "Doesn't it matter to you that I care?"

He did not move or speak, only kept looking down at me with those dark
hollows of his eyes, not a glimmer of light moved in them that I could
see, and, listening to the deep come-and-go of his breathing I felt
frightened.

"No, I never thought, I never dreamed such a thing was possible," he
said at last, in a queer, shocked, half-awed voice. "You don't know
what you are talking about, child," and he leaned forward, resting his
elbow on his knee and his forehead in his hand.

"But I do know! I care terribly. All these days when I haven't known
what had become of you I have been understanding it, and I am glad I
said it," I put my hand on his, which rested on the seat beside me.

He shook it off, pushed it away from him. "No, don't do that," he said
quickly. "Don't tell me that it is so. You are too good for it!"
Then he said slowly, measuring every word as if he meant I should
clearly understand: "This comes too late for me. I have gone too far
in the wrong direction, and now I am going away with the Spanish Woman."

"No, no, no!" I cried vehemently. "You must not! You are too good for
that!"

"No, that is a