"Child, what is it?" Merefleet said, conscious of a hidden barrier between them. "Can't you trust yourself to me? Is that it? Are you afraid of me? You didn't shrink from me yesterday."
She bowed her head. Yesterday she had wept in his arms. But to-day no tears came. Only a halting whisper, a woman's cry of sheer weakness.
"Don't tempt me, Big Bear!" she murmured. "Oh, don't tempt me! I am not—free!"
Merefleet's face grew stern.
"You did not say that yesterday," he said.
She heard the change in his tone, and looked up. She was better able to meet this from him.
"I know," she said. "And I guess that was where I went wrong. I ought to have waited till we were dead. But, you see, I didn't know."
"Then do you tell me you are not free?" Merefleet said. "Do you mean literally that? Are you the actual property of another man?"
She shook her head with baffling promptitude.
"I guess I'm just Death's property, Big Bear," she said, with a wistful little smile. "But he doesn't seem over-keen on having me."