he fever. It isn't any time now for you to
talk. Besides, until you believe me, I can not talk with you any
more. I've been a little rough, maybe, I don't know; but as God
made this world, those trees, that sun yonder, I never said a word
to you yet that wasn't true. I've never wanted of you what wasn't
right, in my own creed. Sometimes we have to frame up a creed all
for ourselves, don't you know that? The world isn't always run on
the same lines everywhere. It's different, in places."

"Will you tell me all about it--about her, sometime?"

"If you are going away, why should you ask that? If you are going
to be nothing to me, in all the world, what right have you to ask
that of me? You would not have the right I've had in speaking to
you as I have. That was right. It was the right of love. I love
you! I don't care if all the world knows it. Let that girl there
hear if she likes. I've said, we belong together, and it seems
truth to me, the very truth; yes, and the very right itself. But
some way, we hurt each other, don't we? Look at you, there,
suffering. My fault. And I'd rather it had cost me a limb than to
see you hurt that way. It cuts my heart. I can't rest over it.
And you hurt me, too, I reckon, about as bad as anything can.
Maybe you hurt me more than you know. But as to our rights to
anything back of the curtain that's before us, before your life and
mine, why, I can't begin until something else has begun. It's not
right, unless that other is right, that I've told you. We belong
together in the one big way, first. That's the premise. That's
the one great thing. What difference about the rest, future or
past?"

"You've not been much among women," she said.

"Very little."

"You don't understand them."

"I don't reckon anybody does."

"Jeanne told me that she heard, last night, a child crying, here in
this house."

"Could it not have been a negro child?" He smiled at her, even as
he stood under inquisition.

She noticed that his face now seemed pale. The bones of the cheeks
stood out more now. He showed more gravity. Freed of his red
fighting flush, the, flame of passion gone out of his eyes, he
seemed more dignified, more of a man than had hitherto been
apparent to her.

"_Non_! _Non_!" cried out Jeanne, who had benefited unnoticed to
an extent undreamed hitherto in her experience in matter delicate
between man and maid. Her mistress raised a hand. She herself ha