"Thinking that I might come that way."
"Well, yes. I did think just that; and followed her softly as one of your own hounds would have crept. When I saw where she was going, the fire all went out of my heart. I could have cried for joy that—that it was no worse."
"Still you hated her!"
"Because she dared to love where I did."
"Do you indeed love me so, Judith?"
"Do I love myself, so common and worthless, compared to you? Do I love the air I breathe? Do I love sleep, after a hard day's work? Oh, oh, Richard, why ask such silly questions?"
"Why? Oh, because one is never certain. Girls are so fickle now-a-days."
"As if any girl who ever loved you could be fickle."
Storms looked into the girl's face as she nestled close to him, and a strange, fond glow came into his eyes. He was thinking how much she looked like Ruth Jessup, with that warm love-light in her face—how beautiful she really was in the lustre of that rising moon. Tenderness with him at the moment was not all a pretence. But Storms was a man to bring the worst as well as the best passions of a heart down to his own interests, and never, for a moment, since he had seen old Jessup's letter in Judith's hand, had he ceased to devise some means of gaining possession of it.
"Words are so easily spoken," he said; "but I like deeds. I want the girl I love to trust me."