“Good Heavens, girl, in such a night! Why, it’s worth your life! Listen to it! The creeks will be up and you’ll have to swim. No, I can’t let you.”
“He’s a good little horse, and he’ll take me through.” Then, coming close, she continued: “Oh, boy! Can’t you see that I want to help? Can’t you see that I—I’d die for you if it would do any good?” He gazed gravely into her wide blue eyes and said, awkwardly: “Yes, I know. I’m sorry things are—as they are—but you wouldn’t have me lie to you, little woman?”
“No. You’re the only true man I ever knew. I guess that’s why I love you. And I do love you, oh, so much! I want to be good and worthy to love you, too.”
She laid her face against his arm and caressed him with clinging tenderness, while the wind yelled loudly about the eaves and the windows drummed beneath the rain. His heavy brows knit themselves together as she whispered:
“I love you! I love you! I love you!” with such an agony of longing in her voice that her soft accents were sharply distinguishable above the turmoil. The growing wildness seemed a part of the woman’s passion, which whipped and harried her like a willow in a blast.
“Things are fearfully jumbled,” he said, finally. “And this is a bad time to talk about them. I wish they might be different. No other girl would do what you have offered to-night.”
“Then why do you think of that woman?” she broke in, fiercely. “She’s bad and false. She betrayed you once; she’s in the play now; you’ve told me so yourself. Why don’t you be a man and forget her?”
“I can’t,” he said, simply. “You’re wrong, though, when you think she’s bad. I found to-night that she’s good and brave and honest. The part she played was played innocently, I’m sure of that, in spite of the fact that she’ll marry McNamara. It was she who overheard them plotting and risked her reputation to warn me.”
Cherry’s face whitened, while the shadowy eagerness that had rested there died utterly. “She came into that dive alone? She did that?” He nodded, at which she stood thinking for some time, then continued: “You’re honest with me, Roy, and I’ll be the same with you. I’m tired of deceit, tired of everything. I tried to make you think she was bad, but in my own heart I knew differently all the time. She came here to-day and humbled herself to get the truth, humbled herself to me, and I sent her away. She suspected, but she didn’t know, and when she asked for information I insulted her. That’s the kind of a creature I am. I sent her back to Struve, who offered to tell her the whole story.”
“What does that renegade want?”