"Oh, doggon me. The moment that boat's gun sounds--if only you're out o' the way--I'll make a try. Go! for Heaven's sake, go!"
Instead, with an agony of fondness, she glided to him. Distress held him as fast and mute as at the flag presentation. But when she would have knelt he caught her elbows and held her up by force.
"No," he moaned, "you shan't do that."
She crimsoned and dropped her face between their contending arms while for pure anguish he impetuously added, "Maybe in God's eyes a woman has this right, I'm not big enough to know; but as I'm made it can't be done. I'm a man, no more, no less!"
Her eyes flashed into his: "You are Hilary Kincaid. I will stan'!"
"No,"--he loosed his hold,--"I'm only Hilary Kincaid and you'll go--in mercy to both of us--in simple good faith to every one we love--Oh, leave me!" He swung his head in torture: "I'd sooner be shot for a spy or a coward than be the imbecile this makes me." Then all at once he was fierce: "Go!"
Almost below her breath she instantly replied, "I will not!" She stood at her full, beautiful height. "Together we go or together stay. List-en!--no-no, not for that." (Meaning the gun.) In open anger she crimsoned again: "'Twill shoot, all right, and Anna, she'll go. Yes, she will leave you. She can do that. And you, you can sen' her away!"
He broke in with a laugh of superior knowledge and began to draw back, but she caught his jacket in both hands, still pouring forth,--"She has leave you--to me! me to you! My God! Hilary Kincaid, could she do that if she love' you? She don't! She knows not how--and neither you! But you, ah, you shall learn. She, she never can!" Through his jacket her knuckles felt the bare knife. Her heart leapt.
"Let go," he growled, backing away and vainly disengaging now one of her hands and now the other. "My trowel's too silent."
But she clung and dragged, speaking on wildly: "You know, Hilary, you know? You love me. Oh, no-no-no, don' look like that, I'm not crazee." Her deft hands had got the knife, but she tossed it into the work-basket: "Ah, Hilary Kincaid, oft-en we love where we thing we do not, and oft-en thing we love where we do not--"