The man might hate him, but would not make a fuss. The offense was comparatively old, and men did not pursue other people's stale vendettas. The beginning and end of vengeance was a threatening gesture. He knew just what that broad-shouldered man was saying, and thinking. He was a scoundrel, he deserved flogging. If he had been on hand when the girl squealed, he would have torn the heart out of the offender. But he wasn't there; and the girl had shown both her purity and her intelligence by preferring his gentle courtship to the violent love-making of Ronnie Morelle. In a sense the incident was subtly flattering to the broad-shouldered young man.
Ronnie was not seeing Evie in these days, he was more pleasingly engaged. The new game was infinitely more intriguing, an opponent better armed for the fight and offering a more glorious triumph.
But Steppe's warning piqued him. Sault! His lips curled in derision. That nigger! That half-caste jail-bird!
He wrote to Evie that night making an appointment.
IV
"You don't know how happy I was when I found your letter at the store this morning. The manager doesn't like girls to get letters, he is an awful fossil, but he's rather keen on me. I told him your letters were from an uncle who isn't friends with mother."
"What a darling little liar you are!" said Ronnie amused. "My dear, I've missed you terribly. I shall have to give up my writing, if it is going to keep me from my girl."
She snuggled closer to his side as they walked slowly through the gloom to her favorite spot. She did not tell him how she had sat there every evening, braving the importunities of those less attractive ghouls who haunt the park in the hours of dusk.
"There have been times," said Ronnie when they had found chairs and drawn them to the shadow of a big elm, "when I felt that I could write no more unless I saw you for a moment. But I set my teeth and worked. I pretend sometimes that you are sitting on the other side of the table and I look up and talk to you."