"I merely asked you if she was pretty."
"There was a woman," he answered doggedly; "though she had nothing to do with the trouble. I was going to call on her the night I—the night the thing happened. I hope she isn't still waiting for me to ring the door-bell."
"You haven't told her where you are?"
"No; but she's not losing any sleep about that. She isn't that kind. Indeed, I'm not sure that she wouldn't turn the letter over to the sheriff, if I should write her. Let's clear this up before we go any further. It was generally understood, in the home town, you know, that we were to be married some time, though nothing definite had ever been said by either of us. There wasn't any sentiment, you understand; I was idiotic enough at the time to believe that there wasn't any such thing as sentiment. It has cost me about as much to give her up as it has cost her to give me up—and that is a little less than nothing."
Again the silence came between. The colonel was knocking his pipe bowl against a tree trunk and an interruption was threatening. When the low voice came again from the hammock it was troubled.
"You are disappointing me, now. You are taking it very lightly, and apparently you neither know nor care very much how the woman may be taking it. Perhaps there wasn't any sentiment on your part."
Smith was laughing quietly. "If you could only know Verda Richlander," he said. "Imagine the most beautiful thing you can think of, and then take the heart out of it, and—but, hold on, I can do better than that," and he drew out his watch and handed it to her with the back case opened.
She took the watch and stopped the hammock swing to let the light from the nearest window fall upon the photograph.
"She is very beautiful; magnificently beautiful," she said, returning the watch. And an instant later: "I don't see how you could say what you did about the sentiment. If I were a man——"
The colonel had mounted the steps and was coming toward them. The young woman slipped from the hammock and stood up.