“Hah! easier! Hah! easier! I need somethin’ to help me do dat? Hah! ’Tis not so!” But the weakness of the wordy denial was itself almost a confession.
They moved on. A few steps brought them into better light. Mr. Tarbox looked at the picture. Zoséphine saw a slight flash of recognition. He handed it back in silence, and they walked on, saying not a word until they reached the stile. But there, putting his foot upon it to bar the way, he said:
“Josephine, the devil never bid so high for me before in his life as he’s bidding for me now. And there’s only one thing in the way; he’s bid too late.”
Her eyes flashed with injured resentment. “Ah, you! you dawn’t know not’n’—” But he interrupted:
“Stop, I don’t mean more than just what I say. Six years ago—six and a half—I met a man of a kind I’d never met, to know it, before. You know who’ I mean, don’t you?”
“Bonaventure?”
“Yes. That meeting made a turning-point in my life. You’ve told me that whatever is best in you, you owe to him. Well, knowing him as I do, I can believe it; and if it’s true, then it’s the same with me; for first he, and then you, have made another man out of me.”
“Ah, naw! Bonaventure, maybe; but not me; ah, naw!”
“But I tell you, yes! you, Josephine! I’m poor sort enough yet; but I could have done things once that I can’t do now. There was a time when if some miserable outlaw stood, or even seemed, maybe, to stand between me and my chances for happiness, I could have handed him over to human justice, so called, as easy as wink; but now? No, never any more! Josephine, I know that man whose picture I’ve just looked at. I could see you avenged. I could lay my hands, and the hands of the law, on him inside of twenty-four hours. You say you can’t marry till the law has laid its penalties on him, or at least while he lives and escapes them. Is that right?”
Zoséphine had set her face to oppose his words only with unyielding silence, but the answer escaped her: