ad; dead as though it had never been. My lawyer is over at
the ranch house now. He'll straighten out everything after we're gone.
Things here are all in your name; you can do as you please with them.
There's no possible excuse for delay." He bent over her, his hands on
her shoulders, his eyes looking into hers compellingly. "God knows
you've been buried here long enough, girl. I'll teach you to live; to
live, do you hear? We'll be very happy together, you and I, Bess;
happier than you ever dreamed of being. Will you come?"

He was silent, and of a sudden the place became very still; still as the
dead past the man had suggested. Wide-eyed, motionless, the girl sat
looking up at him. She did not speak; she scarcely seemed to breathe. As
she had chosen, so had it come to pass; yet involuntarily she delayed.
Deliverance from the haunting solitude that had oppressed her like an
evil dream was beckoning; yet impotent, she held back. Of a sudden,
within her being, something she had fancied dormant had awakened. The
instinct of convention, fundamental, inbred, more vital to a woman than
life itself, intruded preventingly, fair in her path. Warning, pleading,
distinct as a spoken admonition, its voice sounded a negative in her
ears. She tried to silence it, tried to overwhelm it with her newborn
philosophy; but it was useless. Fear of the future, as she had said, she
had none. Good or bad as the man might be, she had chosen. With full
knowledge of his deficiencies she had chosen. But to go away with him
so, without sanction of law or of clergy; she, Bess Landor, who was a
wife--.

The hands on her shoulders tightened insistently, the compelling face
drew nearer.

"Answer me, Bess," demanded a tense voice; "don't keep me in suspense.
Will you go?"

With the motion of a captured wild thing, the girl arose, drew back
until she was free.

"Don't," she pleaded. "Don't hurry me so. Give me a little time to
think." She caught her breath from the effort. "I'll go with you, yes;
but to-day, now--I can't. We must see How first. He must know, must
consent--"

"See How!" The man checked himself. "You must be mad," he digressed. "I
can't see How, nor won't. I tell you it's between How and myself you
must choose. I love you, Bess. I'm proving I love you; but I'm not
insane absolutely. I ask you again: will you come?"

The girl shook her head, nervously, jerkily.

"I can't now, as things are."

"And why not?" passionately. "Haven't