“Say, why—why must you go now, Kate? What is this absurd talk I have heard? You going away because—because of that tree business? Kate, Kate, such an idea isn’t worthy of you. You going? You flying from superstition? No, no, it’s not worthy of you. Kate——” he paused. Then, with a gulp: “You can’t have the wagon. I refuse to—lend it you. I simply must have it.”
Kate was leaning against the door casing. She made no move. Her smile deepened, that was all. She understood all that lay behind the man’s desperate manner, and—she had no intention of yielding.
“If you must have it, you must,” she said, in her deep voice, so like his own. “You had better send for it, but—” her look suddenly hardened—“don’t ever speak to me again. That is all I have to say.”
The man’s determination wavered before the woman’s coldness. He looked into her dark eyes desperately. They were cold and hard. They had never looked at him like that before.
“D’you mean that, Kate?” he demanded desperately. “Do you mean that if I take that wagon you have—done with me forever? Do you?”
“I meant precisely what I said.” Kate suddenly bestirred herself. The coldness in her eyes turned to anger, a swift, hot anger, to which the man was unused, and he shrank before it. “If you are sane you will leave that wagon to me. You do not want it for your haying to-morrow. Anyway, your haying excuse is far too thin for me. I know why you want it. If you take it I wash my hands of you entirely. You must choose now between these things, once and for all. I am in no trifling mood. You must choose now—at once. And your choice must stand for all time.”
Kate watched the effect of every word she spoke, and she knew, long before she finished speaking, she was to have her way. It was always so. This man had no power to refuse her anything. It was only in her absence, when his weakness overwhelmed him, that her influence lost power over him.
All the excitement had died out of his eyes. Anger gave way to despair, decision to weakness and yielding. And through it all a great despair and hopelessness sounded in his voice.
“Oh, Kate,” he cried, “I can’t believe this is you—I can’t—I can’t. You are cruel—crueller than ever I would have believed. You know why I want to keep the wagon just now. I implore you not to do this thing. I will do most anything else you ask me, but—leave that wagon.”
Kate shook her head in cold decision.