"Why did you marry her? Why not have taken Polly at first?" I questioned sternly.
"Because I was a blind, dumb fool all the way through. And when she married I thought that the end of it."
"And when you married, that was the honorable end of it."
"No, it wasn't the end at all. Love with fire in it may smoulder, but it breaks out into a flame if one stirs among the ashes."
Dan suddenly put away his pistol.
"See here, Norme, I'll admit the whole thing is wrong. But a love like that sweeps a man off his feet. I'm going away presently and shall be absent two or three months, and maybe I'll get over it. You see, Polly had some troublesome business to settle. She wasn't left at all well off by that miserable old weasel of a Frenchman. I made some investments for her, and somehow her story was a sad one and she had been my old love, and now that I am going away—Ruth is good enough, but she isn't my kind. Maybe up there all alone I'll straighten matters out and come to my senses, and when I return things may go better with us. Polly and her mother are going to Vincennes to live. She doesn't feel at home in this old mud hole any more. So that's the whole of it. I'm all-fired sorry, Norman, that I went at you so, but the thought of being spied upon made me thundering mad."
The whole thing rang false. Yet I could not controvert it. He was going away. About Polly I could not tell. Perhaps she had planned to follow him.
"Dan," I said—"on your word and honor?"
"As God hears me," he answered solemnly.
"You would break your mother's heart as well, and disgrace us all. And the way Ruth looks, it doesn't seem to me you will have to wait long for your freedom. She is almost transparent."