He felt her throbbing fingers on his wrist and saw her shoulders rise convulsively. An overpowering force within him urged him to clasp her to himself. He opened his arms, but she deftly caught his hands and held them tightly. "No, no," she said, firmly, "not that—not that! Folks say men and women fixed like we are can't love one another without doing wrong; but they can. The strong ones can, and we are strong, Alfred. Our love is sweet enough as it is. It is of heaven; let's keep it right. You might think you'd respect me if I let you hold me in your arms—here at your own house, with your wife away, but you wouldn't—down in your secret soul you'd feel that I was—was tainted."
"Forgive me, Dixie, darling," he cried. "My blood's in my head; I'm dazed and dazzled by you, little girl; but you know best. I wouldn't do a thing you didn't approve of for all the world."
She released his hands with a little, satisfied laugh, and stepped back toward the gate. "Well, I got what I wanted," she said, frankly. "I've been more in the clutch of Old Harry since you went over there than I ever was in all my born days. All day yesterday and to-day I've brooded and brooded and had evil thoughts, till—well, I'd have gone plumb out o' my mind if I hadn't come straight to you. I may as well tell the truth; I don't want a lie, even a little, tiny one, to smut the confidence between us. Alfred, Joe wasn't worrying so—so very much. I was attending to that job. What I said about him was to pump you dry and make you ease my mind. I feel better. I can sleep now. Oh, Alfred—Alfred—good-night!"
He threw out his hands impulsively, but she had evaded them, and, with lowered head, was scudding across the grass toward the light in the cottage.
CHAPTER XXXVIII
HE bar in the Oklahoma village kept by Dick Wrinkle was in the centre of the place. It was a narrow, one-story shanty built of undressed boards, the roof of which sloped from the front to the rear. It was devoid of the conventional door-screen, the rough, unpainted shutter, with its padlock and chain, swinging back against the inner wall.
It was early in the morning. The proprietor, a fat, partially bald man of forty years, without a coat, his shirt-sleeves rolled above his elbows, was sweeping into the cracks of the floor the tobacco-quids, stubs of cigars, and remnants of matches left by his carousing customers the night before. He had just tossed his broom into a corner of the room and was looking out of the door when a dust-laden, travel-worn individual with a familiar look slouched around a corner and said:
"Hello, Dick! Don't you know a fellow?"