y and cold again,
in one last effort at control.

"Who do you think you are, Neil Donovan? I tell you to take me home."

He did not even turn to look at her. He was getting the horse down the
rocky slant of dimly lit road with a patience and concentration which
there was nobody to appreciate just then. Judith collapsed into her
corner. There was a faint sound of helpless crying from her, then
silence as she choked back the tears; silence, and an erect, stubborn
figure showing oppressively big and dark between Judith and the moon.

"Neil, I'm sorry.... Neil, I can't stand this," came a muffled voice.
"Please speak to me."

They were on level ground again, and the horse was disposed to make the
most of it. The boy pulled her into a jolting walk which was not the
most successful of her gaits, but represented a triumph for him just
now, and then he turned abruptly to Judith, gathering both her hands
into his free hand and gripping them tight.

"I'll talk to you now," he said. "It's time I told you. Judith, you and
I are not going back."

CHAPTER TWELVE

"What do you mean?"

"We're not going back," he repeated deliberately.

"We are!" flashed Judith.

"We're not going back. We're never going back."

Judith drew back and stared at him, her hands still in his, and the boy
stared back with a look that matched her own in his big, deeply lit,
dark eyes. White faces, with angry, dark eyes, were all that they could
see clearly, though they were crossing a patch of road where a ragged
gap in the trees let some of the moonlight through; white faces like
strangers' faces.

They were only a boy and girl jolting through the woods in the night in
a rattletrap buggy behind a caricature of a horse, but what looked out
of their angry eyes and spoke in their tense young voices was greater
than the immediate issue of their quarrel, and older and wiser than they
were; as old as the world. Ancient enemies were at war once more. A man
and a woman were making their age-old fight for mastery over themselves
and each other.

"Never, Judy."

"Where are we going, then?"

"What difference does it make?"

"Where?"

"To Wells. We can make it by morning. I've got the mortgage money with
me."

"Your uncle's?"

"Yes. What difference does that make? That, or anything? We'd go if we
hadn't any money at all. We'd have to. Oh, Judith----"

"You don't know what you're saying. Take me home. What are you laughing
at?"

"You.