"Christina!"
"Do you know how big you are? Or what a clear look your eyes have got? There in that coroner's office—oh, heavens,—among those stones!—Bryce, he was there this afternoon! that man!"
"Ten Euyck? Yes, I know."
"Do you know what he means to do as Police Inspector? He means to run me down! Wait—you've never known. I've kept so still—I didn't want to think of it. Four years ago he payed for the production of a play of his, by a stock company I was with. Oh, my dear, that play! It gave us all quite a chill! He wanted his Mark Antony played like a young gentleman arranging the marriage-settlements. But he took the rehearsals so hard, he nearly killed us." She hesitated. "He was very kind to me. He was too kind. One night, he met me as I was coming out of the theater, and—forgot himself. One of the boys in the company, who was right behind me, slapped him in the face! Do you mean to tell me that he has ever forgotten that? At the inquest he thought he had me down, and the laugh turned against him! Is he the man to forget that?"
"But what can he do?"
"How I detested him!" Christina hurried on. "He taught me, in that one minute, when I was eighteen, how men feel about girls who aren't in their class! Just because I was on the stage, he took it for granted I—Well, he, too, learned something! Since then I've heard about him. He isn't a hypocrite, he's an egoist. I wonder, were some of the Puritans really like that? He's so very proper, and so particular not to entangle himself with respectable women! But with women he calls bad he doesn't mind—because for him bad women don't count, they don't exist! Oh, dear God, how I despise a man who feels like that! How I love you, who never, never could! Does he really know, I wonder, that sometimes it's the coldest of heart who can be made to turn his ships at Actium?—'What can he do?' He can hope I'm guilty! And he can use all the machinery of his office to prove me so!"
"Why, look here, dearest, if he's never revenged himself on the man who struck him—"
Christina gave a shrill little cry. "But, now he has his chance with me! His great spectacular chance! Oh, Bryce, I'm afraid of him, and I was never afraid before!—Dearest dear, I know you can't do anything! But the girl's in love with you, poor thing, and she feels as if you can! I've wanted you—oh, how I've wanted you!—all my life. I've known the dearest fellows in the world, the cleverest, the gamest, the most charming. But they were too much like poor Christina; fidgety things, nervous and on edge. 'You take me where the good winds blow and the eternal meadows are!'—What are you doing?"
He had bowed down to kiss her wrist and he replied, "I'm thanking God I look like a farmer!"
"My poor boy!" cried Christina, breaking her tears with little laughs, "I've got your cheek all wet! Bryce dear, we're engaged, aren't we? You haven't said.—Bryce!"