As she passed the door of the hotel one of the younger men who had been lounging about the stove strode out and accosted her. She half-turned, recognized his face in the lamplight, and frankly recoiled.
She had been lost in dreams before, vaguely pensive, for Beatrice had been watching the darkness overspread and encompass the dark fringe of the spruce forest that enclosed the town. Now, because she recognized the man and knew his type—born of the wild places even as herself, but a bastard breed—the tender, wistful half-smile sped from her childish mouth and her eyes grew alert and widened as if with actual fear. She halted, evidently in doubt as to her course.
"Going home?" the man asked. "I'm going up to see your pop, and I'll see you there, if you don't mind."
Ray Brent's voice had an undeniable ring of power. It was deeply bass, evidently the voice of a passionate, reckless, brutal man. The covetous caress of his thick hand upon her arm indicated that he was wholly sure of himself in regard to her.
She stared with growing apprehension into his even-featured, not unhandsome face. Evidently she found it hard to meet his eyes,—eyes wholly lacking in humor and kindliness, but unquestionably vivid and compelling under his heavy, dark brows. "I'm going home," she told him at last. "I guess, if you're going up to see Pop, you can walk along too."
The man fell in beside her, his powerful frame overshadowing hers. It was plain at once that the manner of her consent did not in the least disturb him. "You're just letting me because I'm going up there anyway, eh?" he asked. "I'll walk along further than that with you before I'm done."
The girl paused, as if in appeal. "Ray, we've thrashed that out long ago," she responded. "I wish you wouldn't keep talking about it. If you want to walk with me—"
"All right, but you'll be changing your mind one of these days." Ray's voice rang in the silence, indicating utter indifference to the fact that many of the loungers on the street were listening to the little scene. "I've never seen anything I wanted yet that I didn't get—and I want you. Why don't you believe what your pop says about me? He thinks Ray Brent is the goods."
"I'm not going to talk about it any more. I've already given you my answer—twenty times."
The man talked on, but the girl walked with lifted chin, apparently not hearing. They followed the board sidewalk into the shadows, finally turning in at a ramshackle, three-room house that was perched on the hillside almost at the end of the street at the outer limits of the village.