Clara stepped out of the house and closed the door. A whirl of thoughts ran through her brain. For a moment she felt like laughing, and then what there was in her of her father's shrewdness came to her rescue. “Why shouldn't I do it?” she thought. “Here's my chance. This man is excited and upset now, but he is a man I can respect. It's the best marriage I'll ever have a chance to make. I do not love him, but perhaps that will come. This may be the way marriages are made.”
Clara put out her hand and laid it on Hugh's arm. “Well,” she said, hesitatingly, “you wait here a moment.”
She went into the house and left Hugh standing in the darkness. He was terribly afraid. It seemed to him that every secret desire of his life had got itself suddenly and bluntly expressed. He felt naked and ashamed. “If she comes out and says she'll marry me, what will I do? What'll I do then?” he asked himself.
When she did come out Clara wore her hat and a long coat. “Come,” she said, and led him around the house and through the barnyard to one of the barns. She went into a dark stall and led forth a horse and with Hugh's help pulled a buggy out of a shed into the barnyard. “If we're going to do it there's no use putting it off,” she said with a trembling voice. “We might as well go to the county seat and do it at once.”
The horse was hitched and Clara got into the buggy. Hugh climbed in and sat beside her. She had started to drive out of the barnyard when Jim Priest stepped suddenly out of the darkness and took hold of the horse's head. Clara held the buggy whip in her hand and raised it to hit the horse. A desperate determination that nothing should interfere with her marriage with Hugh had taken possession of her. “If necessary I'll ride the man down,” she thought. Jim came to stand beside the buggy. He looked past Clara at Hugh. “I thought maybe it was that Buckley,” he said. He put a hand on the buggy dash and laid the other on Clara's arm. “You're a woman now, Clara, and I guess you know what you're doing. I guess you know I'm your friend,” he said slowly. “You been in trouble, I know. I couldn't help hearing what your father said to you about Buckley, he talked so loud. Clara, I don't want to see you get into trouble.”
The farm hand stepped away from the buggy and then came back and again put his hand on Clara's arm. The silence that lay over the barnyard lasted until the woman felt she could speak without a break in her voice.
“I'm not going very far, Jim,” she said, laughing nervously. “This is Mr. Hugh McVey and we're going over to the county seat to get married. We'll be back home before midnight. You put a candle in the window for us.”
Hitting the horse a sharp blow, Clara drove quickly past the house and into the road. She turned south into the hill country through which lay the road to the county seat. As the horse trotted quickly along, the voice of Jim Priest called to her out of the darkness of the barnyard, but she did not stop. The afternoon and evening had been cloudy and the night was dark. She was glad of that. As the horse went swiftly along she turned to look at Hugh who sat up very stiffly on the buggy seat and stared straight ahead. The long horse-like face of the Missourian with its huge nose and deeply furrowed cheeks was ennobled by the soft darkness, and a tender feeling crept over her. When he had asked her to become his wife, Clara had pounced like a wild animal abroad seeking prey and the thing in her that was like her father, hard, shrewd and quick-witted, had led her to decide to see the thing through at once. Now she became ashamed, and her tender mood took the hardness and shrewdness away. “This man and I have a thousand things we should say to each other before we rush into marriage,” she thought, and was half inclined to turn the horse and drive back. She wondered if Hugh had also heard the stories connecting her name with that of Buckley, the stories she was sure were now running from lip to lip through the streets of Bidwell, and what version of the tale had been carried to him. “Perhaps he came to propose marriage in order to protect me,” she thought, and decided that if he had come for that reason she was taking an unfair advantage. “It is what Kate Chanceller would call 'doing the man a dirty, low-down trick,'” she told herself; but even as the thought came she leaned forward and touching the horse with the whip urged him even more swiftly along the road.
A mile south of the Butterworth farmhouse the road to the county seat crossed the crest of a hill, the highest point in the county, and from the road there was a magnificent view of the country lying to the south. The sky had begun to clear, and as they reached the point known as Lookout Hill, the moon broke through a tangle of clouds. Clara stopped the horse and turned to look down the hillside. Below lay the lights of her father's farmhouse—where he had come as a young man and to which long ago he had brought his bride. Far below the farmhouse a clustered mass of lights outlined the swiftly growing town. The determination that had carried Clara thus far wavered again and a lump came into her throat.
Hugh also turned to look but did not see the dark beauty of the country wearing its night jewels of lights. The woman he wanted so passionately and of whom he was so afraid had her face turned from him, and he dared to look at her. He saw the sharp curve of her breasts and in the dim light her cheeks seemed to glow with beauty. An odd notion came to him. In the uncertain light her face seemed to move independent of her body. It drew near him and then drew away. Once he thought the dimly seen white cheek would touch his own. He waited breathless. A flame of desire ran through his body.