“What is it?” he demanded.
She stood rigidly erect with her eyes shut and hands clasped at her sides. Then she slid down upon the box, lifting to him a white mask of fright.
“It’s Nicholas,” she said, hardly above her breath.
A sudden relief swept over John Woolfolk. In his mind he dismissed as negligible the heavy man fumbling beneath his soiled apron. He wondered how the other could have got such a grip on Millie Stope’s imagination.
The mystery that had enveloped her was fast disappearing, leaving them without an obstacle to the happiness he proposed. Woolfolk said curtly:
“Has Nicholas been annoying you?”
She shivered, with clasped straining hands.
“He says he’s crazy about me,” she told him in a shuddering voice that contracted his heart. “He says that I must—must marry him, or—” Her period trailed abruptly out to silence.
Woolfolk grew animated with determination, an immediate purpose.
“Where would Nicholas be at this hour?” he asked.