forth the passionate cry of her mission after
that sleepless night.

"I beg of you--I implore you--don't!"

Had anyone told her yesterday that she would have been begging any man
in melodramatic supplication for anything, she would have thought of
herself as mad. Wasn't she mad? Wasn't he mad? Yet she broke into
passionate appeal.

"It is horrible--unspeakable! I cannot bear it!"

A flood of color swept his cheeks and with it came a peculiar, feminine,
almost awkward, gentleness. His air was that of wordless humility. He
seemed more than ever an uncomprehending, sure prey for Leddy.

"Don't you realize what death is?" she asked.

The question, so earnest and searching, had the contrary effect on him.
It changed him back to his careless self. He laughed in the way of one
who deprecates another's illusion or passing fancy. This added to her
conviction that he did not realize, that he was incapable of realizing,
his position.

"Do you think I am about to die?" he asked softly.

"With Pete Leddy firing at you twenty yards away--yes! And you pose--you
pose! If you were human you would be serious!"

"Pose?" He repeated the word. It startled him, mystified him. "The
clothes I bought to please Firio, you mean?" he inquired, his face
lighting.

"No, about death. It is horrible--horrible! Death for which I am
responsible!"

"Why, have you forgotten that we settled all that?" he asked. "It was not
you. It was the habit I had formed of whistling in the loneliness of the
desert. I am sorry, now, that I did not stick to singing, even at the
expense of a sore throat."

Now he called to Leddy, and his voice, high-pitched and powerful, seemed
to travel in the luminous air as on resilient, invisible wires.

"Leddy, wasn't it the way I whistled to you the first time we met that
made you want satisfaction? You remember"--and he broke into a whistle.
His tone was different from that to Leddy on the pass; the whistle was
different. It was shrill and mocking.

"Yes, the whistle!" yelled Leddy. "No man can whistle to me like that
and live!"

Jack laughed as if he appreciated all the possibilities of humor inherent
in the picture of the bloodthirsty Leddy, the waiting seconds and the
gallery. He turned to Mary with a gesture of his outstretched hands:

"There, you see! I brought it on myself."

"You are brutal! You are without feeling--you are ridiculous--you--" she
stormed, chokingly.

And in face of this he became rea