be,
waiting. And yet as he drew near huge hands held him back, and heavy
weights clogged his feet. His heart said: "On! quick! She will tell the
truth, and all will be well." His mind said: "Slow, slow; this is the
end." He hurled the thought aside, and crashed through the barrier.

She was standing still and listening, with a huge basket of the piled
froth of the field upon her head. One long brown arm, tender with
curvings, balanced the cotton; the other, poised, balanced the slim
swaying body. Bending she listened, her eyes shining, her lips apart,
her bosom fluttering at the well-known step.

He burst into her view with the fury of a beast, rending the wood away
and trampling the underbrush, reeling and muttering until he saw her.
She looked at him. Her hands dropped, she stood very still with drawn
face, grayish-brown, both hands unconsciously out-stretched, and the
cotton swaying, while deep down in her eyes, dimly, slowly, a horror lit
and grew. He paused a moment, then came slowly onward doggedly,
drunkenly, with torn clothes, flying collar, and red eyes. Then he
paused again, still beyond arm's-length, looking at her with fear-struck
eyes. The cotton on her head shivered and dropped in a pure mass of
white and silvery snow about her limbs. Her hands fell limply and the
horror flamed in her wet eyes. He struggled with his voice but it grated
and came hoarse and hard from his quivering throat.

"Zora!"

"Yes, Bles."

"You--you told me--you were--pure."

She was silent, but her body went all a-tremble. He stepped forward
until she could almost touch him; there standing straight and tall he
glared down upon her.

"Answer me," he whispered in a voice hard with its tight held sobs. A
misery darkened her face and the light died from her eyes, yet she
looked at him bravely and her voice came low and full as from afar.

"I asked you what it meant to be pure, Bles, and--and you told--and I
told you the truth."

"What it meant!--what it meant!" he repeated in the low, tense anguish.

"But--but, Bles--" She faltered; there came an awful pleading in her
eyes; her hand groped toward him; but he stepped slowly back--"But,
Bles--you said--willingly--you said--if--if she knew--"

He thundered back in livid anger:

"Knew! All women know! You should have _died_!"

Sobs were rising and shaking her from head to foot, but she drove them
back and gripped her breasts with her hands.

"No, Bles--no--all girls do no