She hesitated and stood still. "The sheriff talks freely to father," she said. "In fact, I think father went over to Dodd's to meet him. I am sorry to have to tell you this, but you might hear it and not understand. Father liked you all along till—" She broke off, at a loss for words sufficiently delicate to express her meaning.
"Till the good old man found that I was a menace under his roof," Charles put in, bitterly. "That's what I am, Miss Row—"
"Stop!" she suddenly cried out. "Have you lost consideration for my feelings? Am I to count for nothing in this matter? What if you can't reveal everything to me? I don't care. To me you are the soul of honor; to me you are the noblest, most abused man on earth. Charlie, I'll stand by you; I'll go with you if they put you in jail. They can't punish you without punishing me. I've told my father so. My brothers know how I feel. That is why father—as I started to say—is so worried. He doesn't know what to do. He has his pride; he loves me, wants to protect me, and does not know which way to turn."
"And there is nothing I can do, as I see it," Charles groaned, leaning on his hoe, his great, famished eyes on hers. "If it would help, I'd gladly kill myself, but my death would prove nothing but my cowardice and confirm them in their suspicions."
She stepped back to him. She laid her slender, tapering hand on his arm and looked into his face steadily. "Yes, you are too brave for that," she faltered, giving her proud head a little shake of emphasis. "I've never been afraid of that. You, like myself, were born to suffer, it seems, but we will stand up under it, won't we? Let them all do their worst; it won't kill us, for we love each other, don't we, Charlie?"
He lowered his uncovered head; his grim, ashen face was wrung as from deathly pain.
"We love each other, don't we, Charlie?" she repeated, entreatingly.
A shudder shook him from head to foot. "How can I be glad to hear you say that," he asked, "when I know that it is your ruin and that I brought it on you? I have no right to tell you how I feel—how I've felt ever since I kissed you that night in the parlor and you lay so willingly in my arms and hung about my accursed neck. What can I do—what in the name of God, my tormentor? Shall I throw my sacred promise to the winds and laugh in the face of—of—?"
"No!" she cried out. "No, for I'd be doing it. I'd be your evil temptress. Be yourself, Charlie—be what you were before I met you. I think I know—you are selling yourself for some one else as I was willing to do when my brothers were in danger. Don't let me tempt you—don't let anything tempt you. God brought me out of my darkness—by your aid He brought me out. He only knows what my awful struggle was when I was ready to go to that repulsive man as his wife with your image locked in my breast—with my desire for you wrapped around my soul. God helped me; surely He will help you. What are earthly troubles for if they are not to be conquered, trampled under foot, as we mount to the heights to which we are destined? You shall not tell me anything. I know your soul, and that is enough."
She turned quickly and moved away. He saw the heads of her brothers as they wended their way toward Dodd's through the tall waving corn. How steadily, how erectly she walked toward the old mansion of her forebears! He noted the tiny marks of her shoes in the soil at his feet. He could have kissed them; he could have fallen on his knees before them in reverent, worshipful humility.