te terrible."

"I don't know. I suppose," she said, "they're all like that. Yet they
can't all be dreadful."

Lucy laughed. He couldn't see her point. "I don't understand who 'they'
are."

"The women who are--the women who've got children."

She stooped down and picked up something from the floor. It was the
little man out of the cart that the child had been playing with, that
lay there, smashed, at her feet. The manager's wife had stepped on it.
Kitty set the little man upon the seat and smiled at him sadly. And Lucy
smiled at her out of a great and sudden tenderness.

He thought he saw it now.

"I think," said he, "you must allow for a little maternal jealousy."

"Jealousy? I can understand jealousy."

"So can I," said Lucy.

"And you think that was jealousy?"

"Well, you know, that little boy was making barefaced love to you."

She laughed. "I suppose," she said, "you _would_ feel like that about
it."

She got up and they went out, past the hotel front and down the lawn, in
sight of the veranda, where at this hour everybody was there to see
them. Lucy meant everybody to see. He had chosen that place, and that
hour, also, which wore, appropriately, the innocence of morning. He knew
her pitiful belief that he was defying public opinion in being seen with
her; but from her ultimate consent, from her continuous trust in him,
and from the heartrending way she clung to him, he gathered that she
knew him, she knew that defiance, from him, would be a vindication of
her.

He did not yet know how dear she had become to him. Only, as he looked
at her moving close beside him, so beautiful and so defenceless, he
thanked God that he had kept his manhood clean, so that nothing that he
did for her could hurt her.

And so, holding himself very upright, and with his head in the air, he
went slowly past the veranda and the Hankins, and, turning to Mrs.
Tailleur, gave them the full spectacle of his gladness and his pride in
her.

"How good you are to me," she said. "I know why you did that."

"Do you?"

He smiled, guarding his secret, holding it back a little while longer.

"Where are we going to?"

"Anywhere you choose to take me."

He took her through the gate that led them to the freedom of the Cliff.

"Do you see that?" He pointed to the path which was now baked hard and
white by the sun.

"What is it?"

"Your little footprints, and my great hoofmarks beside them. I believe
nobody comes this way but y