"Don't bother. What else should it be?"
"Then I must be getting ready, you know. The mistress must have warning," said the girl, too happy for resentment.
"The mistress! There it is. You cannot expect me to take a wife from the bar-room. No, no! We must manage it in some other way."
Judith drew a deep breath.
"I will do anything you tell me—anything at all," she said. "Only let me make sure that you are as happy as I am."
"Happy! Of course I'm happy. Why not?" answered the young man. "Now, you'd better be going home. It is getting late."
Judith arose, drew her scarlet sacque closer around her, pulled the jaunty little hat over her eyes, and stood in the moonlight waiting for her lover. He arose heavily, and dropping both clasped hands between his knees, sat in the shadow, regarding her with sullen interest. She could not see his face, but there was a glitter of his eyes that pierced the shadows with sinister brightness. The picture of the girl was so vivid, framed in the old doorway, with that deep background of water over which the moonlight seemed to leap, leaving that in darkness, and herself flooded in light, so fearfully vivid, that the man whom she hoped to marry could never afterward sweep it from his brain.
"Come," she said, "I'm ready."
"And so am I," he answered, starting up and dashing his hands apart, as if a serpent had entangled them against his will. "What are you waiting for?"
"What have I been long and long waiting for?" said the girl; "but it has come at last. Oh, Richard, say that it has come at last."