"Have you forgotten that night last winter when you—when I saw you at the gate with Nancy Bryerson?"
"I'm not likely to forget it."
She seized her courage and held it fast, putting maidenly shame to the wall.
"Tom, it is a terrible thing to say—and your punishment will be terrible. But you must marry Nancy!"
"And father another man's child?—not much!" he answered brutally.
"And father your own children—two of them," she said, with bitter emphasis.
"Oh, that's it, is it?" he said, with a deeper scowl. "So there are two of them, are there? That's why no woman in Mr. Farley's country colony is at home to me any more, I suppose." And then, still more bitterly: "Of course, you are all sure of this?—Nan has at last confessed that I am the guilty man?"
"You know she has not, Tom. Her loyalty is still as strong and true at it is mistaken. But your duty remains."
He was standing on the brink of the cliff, looking down on Paradise Valley, spread like a silver-etched map far below in the moonlight. The flare and sough of the furnace at the iron-works came and went with regular intermittency; and just beyond the group of Chiawassee stacks a tiny orange spot appeared and disappeared like a will-o'-the-wisp. He was staring down at the curious spot when he said:
"If I say that I have no duty toward Nan, you will believe it is a lie—as you did once before. Have you ever reflected that it is possible to trample on love until it dies—even such love as I bear you?"