more to be said. It's all useless talk. We can do no
more than we've done."

"Shall I tell them you don't like the subject, not to speak of it
again?"

He glanced at her with sudden suspicion:

"No, no, of course not. They've a right to say anything they please.
But it's a waste of time, there's nothing but guessing now. What's the
use of guessing and wondering all through the winter. Are they going
to keep on that way till the spring?"

"I'll tell them not to," she said as a simple solution of the
difficulty. "I'll tell them it worries you."

"Don't," he said sharply. "Do you hear? Don't. Do you want to act
like a fool and make me angry with you?"

He got up and moved away, leaving her staring blankly at his back. He
had been rough to her often, but never before spoken with this note of
peremptory, peevish displeasure. She felt an obscure sense of trouble,
a premonition of disaster. She went to him and, standing close, put
her hand inside his arm.

"Low," she pleaded, "what's wrong with you? You were angry that they
came. Now you're angry at what they say. I don't understand. Tell me
the reason of it. If there's something that I don't know let me hear
it, and I'll try and straighten things out."

For a tempted moment he longed to tell her, to gain ease by letting her
share his burden. The hand upon his arm was a symbol of her hold upon
him that no action of his could ever loose. If he could admit her
within the circle of his isolation he would have enough. He would lose
the baleful consciousness of forever walking apart, separated from his
kind, a spiritual Ishmaelite. She had strength enough. For the moment
he felt that she was the stronger of the two, able to bear more than
he, able to fortify him and give him courage for the future. He had a
right to claim such a dole of her love, and once the knowledge hers,
they two would stand, banished from the rest of the world, knit
together by the bond of their mutual knowledge.

The temptation clutched him and his breast contracted in the rising
struggle. His pain clamored for relief, his weakness for support. The
lion man, broken and tamed by the first pure passion of his life, would
have cast the weight of his sin upon the girl he had thought to bear
through life like a pampered mistress.

With the words on his lips he looked at her. She met the look with a
smile that she tried to make brave, but that was only a surface
grimace, her s