"I don't know what to say to comfort you," said Charles. His voice shook and he tried to steady it. "I am ashamed of myself for sinking so low as to be angry with that man at such a time as this. You are stretched on the rack, Miss Rowland, and you are being tortured. I wish I could take your place—as God is my judge, I do! I can't bear the sight of it. It is unfair, hellish, satanic! It must not go on like this."
"I want you to—to think well of me," Mary said, haltingly, "and I believe you will. You must not think me shallow if I appear to be light-hearted to-night with Mr. Frazier. You see, everything depends on him now. He knows where the boys are, and if I were to anger him or rouse his suspicions in any way he would turn against us. I am sorry he is like that, but he is. I see now that I made a mistake in allowing him to pay such constant attention to me, but I am only a weak girl and couldn't help it. You see, at first he offered to take me to places, parties, picnics, and I wanted to go, as any girl would in my place, and that is the way it began. Then he became dictatorial and jealous, and so it went on till—well, you see how it now is. My father is indebted to him and so am I now."
"Surely you haven't obligated yourself—" stammered Charles.
"Not in so many words," Mary broke in, "but it amounts to the same thing. He wants me to let him furnish the money to pay Tobe Keith's expenses to Atlanta, and I see no other way than to accept his offer. If it goes that far, I shall consent to be his wife. If he saves my brothers from the scaffold I'll be his slave for life. Love? I don't expect love. What he feels for me is not love, and what I would be giving would not be, either. Love is a dreamlike thing, more of the soul than the body."
"I know what love is now," Charles thought. "I never knew before, but I do now."
The steps of the two men were heard coming from the barn, and Mary went hastily out of the lamplight and into the gloom of the hall.
"Our supper is ready, Albert," Charles heard her say. "Come on before it is cold."
Passing through the dining-room, Charles managed to reach the yard by means of a side door without having to meet Frazier. He found himself standing among some fig-trees and grape-vines in the dewy grass, surrounded by what had been beds of flowers in the day when the place had been well kept. An unshaded window of the dining-room was before him, and through it Charles saw Frazier and Mary approaching the table. The man's arm was actually about the girl's waist, his coarse lips were close to her pale cheek. He was smiling broadly, and laughing as if over some jest of his own making. Charles would have withdrawn his eyes, but he was held as if spellbound by the tragedy which was being enacted, with him as the sole spectator. Charles noted that Frazier sank heavily into a chair without first seeing that Mary was seated. He saw him take a cigar damp with saliva from the corner of his great mouth and place it on a plate at his side. He saw him reach out and take Mary's hand and fondle it patronizingly as he continued to talk. Even in the dim lamplight Charles read in the girl's face the growing desire to resent the fellow's coarse familiarity.
Charles uttered a groan and turned away. Off toward the barn he wandered, finding himself presently at the blacksmith's shop. The wide sliding-door was open, and for no reason of which he was conscious he went into the dark room and sat on the anvil. Money was now the thing he wanted above all else in the world. If only he could anonymously send to the suffering girl the funds needed for Keith's treatment, how glorious it would be! So small a thing and yet it might free the girl from a union that would be a lifelong outrage against her sensitive spirit. Only four hundred dollars! He remembered having spent more than that in a single night at a card-table—more than that on a drunken trip to Atlantic City in the company of reckless associates. Obtaining the money, however, was out of the question. He might get it from William, but he had pledged his honor never to enter his brother's life again; besides, the time was too short. The window of the dining-room gleamed in a sheen of light through the boughs of the trees about the house. He fancied he saw the pair again, and the thought maddened him. Marry that man! Could she possibly work herself up to the ordeal? Yes, for she was simply ready to sacrifice herself, and Charles knew from experience what self-sacrifice was like. He groaned as he left the shop and went toward the barn. The dense wood beyond it, lying under the mystic light of the rising moon, lured him into its bosom, and he decided that he would walk there, for no reason than that he hoped in that way to throw off the gnawing agony which lay upon him.
He had climbed over the fence and was about to plunge into the thicket when he heard a low, guarded whistle. He recognized it as the one Kenneth had used in response to his own as he approached the secret hiding-place. In a low whistle he answered and stood still.