"Such as me, indeed! What is the difference, I should like to know? Only this. I come here because you ask me and urge me to it, while she hasn't the courage, but sits worshipping her sweetheart like a rabbit peeping into a garden it has not the spirit to enter."
"Worshipping! As if she cared for the man!" said Storms, with supreme disdain. "There is nothing in it. She only wants to make me jealous, thinking to bring me back again in that way."
"It seems to me as if you were jealous."
"Jealous!" repeated the young man, growing cautious on reflection. "As if I cared enough for Ruth Jessup for that!"
"I am not so sure," answered Judith, as if talking to herself; "but when I am, it will be a dark day for one of us."
Storms laughed.
"Always threatening some terrible thing," he said, "as if there were any need of that; but how came you, my own sweetheart, Judith Hart, to be wandering about 'The Rest?'"
"I saw her as I was coming this way. She was standing in the cottage porch, giving frightened looks around. The moon was not up yet, though it is climbing into the sky now, but a light streamed through the passage, and I saw her plain enough. Then she stole out, as if in search of some one. I thought she was going into the wilderness."
"Ah, ha! Who was jealous then?"
"Who denies it? That minute I could have killed her. She turned toward 'The Rest.' I followed, thinking—"