PART VI

CHAPTER XXIV

A month later Harboro came home one afternoon to find an envelope addressed to him on the table in the front hall.

He was glad afterward that Sylvia was engaged with Antonia in the dining-room, and did not have a chance to observe him as he examined the thing which that envelope contained.

It was a statement from one of the stables of the town, and it set forth the fact that Harboro was indebted to the stable for horse-hire. There were items, showing that on seven occasions during the past month a horse had been placed at the disposal of Mrs. Harboro.

Harboro was almost foolishly bewildered. Sylvia had gone riding seven times during the month, and she had not even mentioned the matter to him! Clearly here was a mystery. Her days were not sufficiently full of events to make seven outings a matter oflittle consequence to her. She was not given to reticence, even touching very little things. She had some reason for not wishing him to know of these movements of hers.

But this conclusion was absurd, of course. She would understand that the bill for services rendered would eventually come to him. He was relieved when that conclusion came to him. No, she was not seeking to make a mystery out of the matter. Still, the question recurred: Why had she avoided even the most casual mention of these outings?

He replaced the statement in the envelope thoughtfully and put it away in his pocket. He was trying to banish the look of dark introspection from his eyes when Sylvia came in from the kitchen and gave a little cry of joy at sight of him. Shewashappy at the sight of him—Harboro knew it. Yet the cloud did not lift from his brow as he drew her to him and kissed her slowly. She was keeping a secret from him. The conclusion was inescapable.

His impulse was to face the thing frankly,affectionately. He had only to ask her to explain and the thing would be cleared up. But for the first time he found it difficult to be frank with her. If the thing he felt was not a sense of injury, it was at least a sense of mystery: of resentment, too. He could not deny that he felt resentful. At the foundation of his consciousness there was, perhaps, the belief and the hope that she would explain voluntarily. He felt that something precious would be saved to him if she confided in him without prompting, without urging. If he waited, perhaps she would do so. His sense of delicacy forbade him to inquire needlessly into her personal affairs. Surely she was being actuated by some good reason. That she was committed to an evil course was a suspicion which he would have rejected as monstrous. Such a suspicion did not occur to him.

It did not occur to him until the next day, when a bolt fell.

He received another communication from the stable. It was an apology for an error that had been made. The stableman found that he had no account against Mr. Harboro,but that one which should have been made out against Mr. Runyon had been sent to him by mistake.

Quite illogically, perhaps, Harboro jumped to the conclusion that the service had really been rendered to Sylvia, as the original statement had said, and that for some obscure reason it was to be charged against Runyon. But even now it was not a light that he saw. Rather, he was enveloped in darkness. He heard the envelope crackle in his clinched hand. He turned and climbed the stairs heavily, so that he need not encounter Sylvia until he had had time to think, until he could understand.

Sylvia was taking rides, and Runyon was paying for them. That was to say, Runyon was the moving factor in the arrangement. Therefore, Runyon was deriving a pleasure from these rides of Sylvia’s. How? Why, he must be riding with her. They must be meeting by secret appointment.

Harboro shook his head fiercely, like a bull that is being tortured and bewildered by the matadors. No, no! That wasn’t the way the matter was to be explained. Thatcould indicate only one thing—a thing that was impossible.

He began at the beginning again. The whole thing had been an error. Sylvia had been rendered no services at all. Runyon had engaged a horse for his own use, and the bill had simply been sent to the wrong place. That was the rational explanation. It was a clear and sufficient explanation.

Harboro held his head high, as if his problem had been solved. He held himself erect, as if a burden had been removed. He had been almost at the point of making a fool of himself, he reflected. Reason asserted itself victoriously. But something which speaks in a softer, more insistent voice than reason kept whispering to him: “Runyon and Sylvia! Runyon and Sylvia!”

He faced her almost gayly at supper. He had resolved to play the rôle of a happy man with whom all is well. But old Antonia looked at him darkly. Her old woman’s sense told her that he was acting a part, and that he was overacting it. From the depths of the kitchen she regarded him as he sat at the table. She lifted her eyes likeone who hears a signal-cry when he said casually:

“Have you gone riding any more since that other time, Sylvia?”

Sylvia hesitated. “‘That other time’” she repeated vaguely.... “Oh, yes, once since then—once or twice. Why?”

“I believe you haven’t mentioned going.”

“Haven’t I? It doesn’t seem a very important thing. I suppose I’ve thought you wouldn’t be interested. I don’t believe you and I look at a horseback-ride alike. I think perhaps you regard it as quite an event.”

He pondered that deliberately. “You’re right,” he said. “And ... about paying for the horse. I’m afraid your allowance isn’t liberal enough to cover such things. I must increase it next month. Have you been paying out of your own pocket?”

“Yes—yes, of course. It amounts to very little.”

His sombre glance travelled across the table to her. She was looking at her plate. She had the appearance of a child encountering a small obstacle in the way of a coveted pleasure. There was neither guilt noralarm in her bearing, but only an irksome discomfort.

But old Antonia withdrew farther within the kitchen. She took her place under a picture of the Virgin and murmured a little prayer.

PART VITHE GUEST-CHAMBER

CHAPTER XXV

It was remarked in the offices of the Mexican International Railroad about this time that something had gone wrong with Harboro. He made mistakes in his work. He answered questions at random—or he did not answer them at all. He passed people in the office and on the street without seeing them. But worse than all this, he was to be observed occasionally staring darkly into the faces of his associates, as if he would read something that had been concealed from him. He came into one room or another abruptly, as if he expected to hear his name spoken.

His associates spoke of his strange behavior—being careful only to wait until he had closed his desk for the day. They were men of different minds from Harboro’s. He considered their social positions matters which concerned them only; but they had duly noted the fact that he had been taken up in high places and then dropped withoutceremony. They knew of his marriage. Certain rumors touching it had reached them from the American side.

They were rather thrilled at the prospect of a dénouement to the story of Harboro’s eccentricity. They used no harsher word than that. They liked him and they would have deplored anything in the nature of a misfortune overtaking him. But human beings are all very much alike in one respect—they find life a tedious thing as a rule and they derive a stimulus from the tale of downfall, even of their friends. They are not pleased that such things happen; they are merely interested, and they welcome the break in the monotony of events.

As for Harboro, he was a far more deeply changed man than they suspected. He was making a heroic effort in those days to maintain a normal bearing. It was only the little interstices of forgetfulness which enabled any one to read even a part of what was taking place in his thoughts.

He seemed unchanged to Sylvia, save that he admitted being tired or having a headache, when she sought to enliven him, todraw him up to her own plane of merriment. He was reminding himself every hour of the night and day that he must make no irretrievable blunder, that he must do nothing to injure his wife needlessly. Appearances were against her, but possibly that was all.

Yet revelations were being made to him. Facts were arraying themselves and marching before him for review. Suspicion was pounding at him like a body blow that is repeated accurately and relentlessly in the same vulnerable spot.

Why had Sylvia prevented him from knowing anything about her home life? Why had she kept him and her father apart? Why had Eagle Pass ceased to know him, immediately after his marriage? And Peterson, that day they had gone across the river together—why had Peterson behaved so clownishly, following his familiar greeting of Sylvia? Peterson hadn’t behaved like himself at all. And why had she been so reluctant to tell him about the thing that had happened in her father’s house? Was that the course an innocent woman would have pursued?

What was the explanation of these things? Was the world cruel by choice to a girl against whom nothing more serious could be charged than that she was obscure and poor?

These reflections seemed to rob Harboro of the very marrow in his bones. He would have fought uncomplainingly to the end against injustice. He would cheerfully have watched the whole world depart from him, if he had had the consciousness of righting in a good cause. He had thought scornfully of the people who had betrayed their littleness by ignoring him. But what if they had been right, and his had been the offense against them?

He found it almost unbearably difficult to walk through the streets of Eagle Pass and on across the river. What had been his strength was now his weakness. His loyalty to a good woman had been his armor; but what would right-thinking people say of his loyalty to a woman who had deceived him, and who felt no shame in continuing to deceive him, despite his efforts to surround her with protection and love?

And yet ... what did he know againstSylvia? She had gone riding—that was all. That, and the fact that she had made a secret of the matter, and had perhaps given him a false account of the manner in which she had paid for her outings.

He must make sure of much more than he already knew. Again and again he clinched his hands in the office and on the street. He would not wrong the woman he loved. He would not accept the verdict of other people. He would have positive knowledge of his own before he acted.

CHAPTER XXVI

Harboro had admitted a drop of poison to his veins and it was rapidly spreading to every fibre of his being. He was losing the power to think clearly where Sylvia was concerned. Even the most innocent acts of hers assumed new aspects; and countless circumstances which in the past had seemed merely puzzling to him arose before him now charged with deadly significance.

His days became a torture to him. He could not lose himself in a crowd, and draw something of recuperation from a sense of obscurity, a feeling that he was not observed. He seemed now to be cruelly visible to every man and woman on both sides of the river. Strangers who gave more than the most indifferent glance to his massive strength and romantic, swarthy face, with its fine dark eyes and strong lines and the luxuriant black mustache, became to him furtive witnesses to his shame—secret commentators upon his weakness. He recalled picturesof men held in pillories for communities to gibe at—and he felt that his position was not unlike theirs. He had at times a frantic realization that he had unconquerable strength, but that by some ironic circumstance he could not use it.

If his days were sapping his vigor and driving him to the verge of madness, his nights were periods of a far more destructive torture. He had resolved that Sylvia should see no change in him; he was trying to persuade himself that therewasno change in him. Yet at every tenderly inquiring glance of hers he felt that the blood must start forth on his forehead, that body and skull must burst from the tumult going on within them.

It was she who brought matters to a climax.

“Harboro, you’re not well,” she said one evening when her hand about his neck had won no response beyond a heavy, despairing gesture of his arm. His eyes were fixed on vacancy and were not to be won away from their unseeing stare.

“You’re right, Sylvia,” he said, trying toarouse himself. “I’ve been trying to fight against it, but I’m all out of sorts.”

“You must go away for a while,” she said. She climbed on his knee and assumed a prettily tyrannical manner. “You’ve been working too hard. They must give you a vacation, and you must go entirely away. For two weeks at least.”

The insidious poison that was destroying him spread still further with a swift rush at that suggestion. She would be glad to have him out of the way for a while. Were not unfaithful wives always eager to send their husbands away? He closed his eyes resolutely and his hands gripped the arms of his chair. Then a plan which he had been vaguely shaping took definite form. She was really helping him to do the thing he felt he must do.

He turned to her heavily like a man under the influence of a drug. “Yes, I’ll go away for a while,” he agreed. “I’ll make arrangements right away—to-morrow.”

“And I’ll go with you,” she said with decision, “and help to drive the evil hours away.” She had his face between her hands and was smiling encouragingly.

The words were like a dagger thrust. Surely, they were proof of fidelity, of affection, and in his heart he had condemned her.

“Would you like to go with me, Sylvia?” he asked. His voice had become husky.

She drew back from him as if she were performing a little rite. Her eyes filled with tears. “Harboro!” she cried, “do you need to ask me that?” Her fingers sought his face and traveled with ineffable tenderness from line to line. It was as if she were playing a little love-lyric of her own upon a beautiful harp. And then she fell upon his breast and pressed her cheek to his. “Harboro!” she cried again. She had seen only the suffering in his eyes.

He held her in his arms and leaned back with closed eyes. A hymn of praise was singing through all his being. She loved him! she loved him! And then that hymn of praise sank to pianissimo notes and was transformed by some sort of evil magic to something shockingly different. It was as if a skillful yet unscrupulous musician were constructing a revolting medley, placing the sacred song in juxtaposition with the obscene ditty. And the words of therevolting thing were “Runyon and Sylvia! Runyon and Sylvia!”

He opened his eyes resolutely. “We’re making too much over a little matter,” he said with an obvious briskness which hid the cunning in his mind. “I suppose I’ve been sticking to things too close. I’ll take a run down the line and hunt up some of the old fellows—down as far as Torreon at least. I’ll rough it a little. I suspect things have been a little too soft for me here. Maybe some of the old-timers will let me climb up into a cab and run an engine again. That’s the career for a man—with the distance rushing upon you, and your engine swaying like a bird in the air! That will fix me!”

He got up with an air of vigor, helping Sylvia to her feet. “It wouldn’t be the sort of experience a woman could share,” he added. “You’ll stay here at home and get a little rest yourself. I must have been spoiling things for you, too.” He looked at her shrewdly.

“Oh, no,” she said honestly. “I’m only sorry I didn’t realize earlier that you need to get away.”

She went out of the room with something of the regal industry of the queen bee, as if she were the natural source of those agencies which sustain and heal. He heard her as she busied herself in their bedroom. He knew that she was already making preparations for that journey of his. She was singing a soft, wordless song in her throat as she worked.

And Harboro, with an effect of listening with his eyes, stood in his place for a long interval, and then shook his head slowly.

He could not believe in her; he would not believe in her. At least he would not believe in her until she had been put to the test and met the test triumphantly. He could not believe in her; and yet it seemed equally impossible for him to hold with assurance to his unbelief.

CHAPTER XXVII

Returning from the office the next forenoon, Harboro stopped at the head of the short street on which the chief stable of Eagle Pass was situated.

He had had no difficulty in obtaining a leave of absence, which was to be for one week with the privilege of having it extended to twice that time if he felt he needed it. In truth, his immediate superior had heartily approved of the plan of his going for an outing. He had noticed, he admitted, that Harboro hadn’t been altogether fit of late. He was glad he had decided to go away for a few days. He good-naturedly insisted upon the leave of absence taking effect immediately.

And Harboro had turned back toward Eagle Pass pondering darkly.

He scanned the street in the direction of the stable. A stable-boy was exercising a young horse in the street, leading it backand forth, but otherwise the thoroughfare seemed somnolently quiet.

He sauntered along until he came to the stable entrance. He had the thought of entering into a casual conversation with the proprietor. He would try to get at the actual facts touching that mistake the stable people had made. He would not question them too pointedly. He would not betray the fact that he believed something was wrong. He would put his questions casually, innocently.

The boy was just turning in with the horse he had been exercising. He regarded Harboro expectantly. He was the boy who had brought the horses on the night of that ride to the Quemado.

“I didn’t want anything,” said Harboro; “that is, nothing in particular. I’ll be likely to need a horse in a day or two, that’s all.”

He walked leisurely into the shady, cool place of pungent odors. He had just ascertained that the proprietor was out when his attention was attracted by a dog which lay with perfect complacency under a rather good-looking horse.

“A pretty dangerous place, isn’t it?” he asked of the stable-boy.

“Youwouldthink so, wouldn’t you? But it isn’t. They’re friends. You’ll always find them together when they can get together. When Prince—that’s the horse—is out anywhere, we have to pen old Mose up to keep him from following. Once when a fellow hired Prince to make a trip over to Spofford, old Mose got out, two or three hours later, and followed him all the way over. He came back with him the next day, grinning as if he’d done something great. We never could figure out how old Mose knew where he had gone. Might have smelled out his trail. Or he might have heard them talking about going to Spofford, and understood. The more you know about dogs the less you know about them—same as humans.”

He went back farther into the stable and busied himself with a harness that needed mending.

Harboro was looking after him with peculiar intensity. He looked at the horse, which stood sentinel-like, above the drowsingdog. Then he engaged the stable-boy in further conversation.

“A pretty good-looking horse, too,” he said. And when the boy nodded without enthusiasm, he added: “By the way, I suppose it’s usually your job to get horses ready when people want them?”

“Yes, mostly.”

Harboro put a new note of purposefulness into his voice. “I believe you send a horse around for Mrs. Harboro occasionally?”

“Oh, yes; every week or so, or oftener.”

Harboro walked to the boy’s side and drew his wallet from his pocket deliberately. “I wish,” he said, “that the next time Mrs. Harboro needs a horse you’d send this fine animal to her. I have an idea it would please her. Will you remember?” He produced a bank-note and placed it slowly in the boy’s hand.

The boy looked up at him dubiously, and then understood. “I’ll remember,” he said.

Harboro turned away, but at the entrance he stopped. “You’d understand, of course, that the dog wouldn’t be allowed to go along,” he called back.

“Oh, yes. Old Mose would be penned up. I’d see to it.”

“And I suppose,” said Harboro finally, “that if I’d telephone to you any day it wouldn’t take you long to get a horse ready for me, would it? I’ve been thinking of using a horse a little myself.”

He was paying little attention to the boy’s assurances as he went away. His step had become a little firmer as he turned toward home. He seemed more like himself when he entered the house and smiled into his wife’s alertly questioning eyes.

“It’s all right, I’m to get away,” he explained. “I’m away now, strictly speaking. I want to pack up a few things some time to-day and get the early morning train for Torreon.”

She seemed quite gleeful over this cheerful information. She helped him make selection of the things he would need, and she was ready with many helpful suggestions. It seemed that his train left the Eagle Pass station at five o’clock in the morning—a rather awkward hour; but he did not mind, he said.

They spent the day together without any restraints, seemingly. There were a good many things to do, and Sylvia was happy in the thought of serving him. If he regarded her now and again with an expression of smouldering fire in his eyes she was unaware of the fact. She sang as she worked, interrupting her song at frequent intervals to admonish him against this forgetfulness or that.

She seemed to be asleep when, an hour before daybreak, he stirred and left her side. But she was awake immediately.

“Is it time to go?” she asked sleepily.

“I hoped I needn’t disturb you,” he said. “Yes, I ought to be getting on my way to the station.”

She lay as if she were under a spell while he dressed and made ready to go out. Her eyes were wide open, though she seemed to see nothing. Perhaps she was merely stupid as a result of being awakened; or it may be that indefinable, foreboding thoughts filled her mind.

When he came to say good-by to her sheput her arms around his neck. “Try to have a good time,” she said, “and come back to me your old self again.”

She felt fearfully alone as she heard him descend the stairs. She held her head away from the pillow until she heard the sharp closing of the street-door. “He’s gone,” she said. She shivered a little and drew the covers more closely about her.

CHAPTER XXVIII

Runyon rode out past Harboro’s house that afternoon.

Sylvia, in her place by the window, watched him come. In the distance he assumed a new aspect in her eyes. She thought of him impersonally—as a thrilling picture. She rejoiced in the sight of him as one may in the spectacle of an army marching with banners and music.

And then he became to her a glorious troubadour, having no relationship with prosaic affairs and common standards, but a care-free creature to be loved and praised because of his song; to be heard gladly and sped on his way with a sigh.

The golden notes of his songs out at the Quemado echoed in her ears like the mournful sound of bells across lonely fields. Her heart ached again at the beauty of the songs he had sung.

... She went down-stairs and stood by the gate, waiting for him.

They talked for a little while, Runyon bending down toward her. She thought of him as an incomparably gay and happy creature. His musical powers gave him a mystic quality to her. She caressed his horse’s mane and thrilled as she touched it, as if she were caressing the man—as if he were some new and splendid type of centaur. And Runyon seemed to read her mind. His face became more ruddy with delight. His flashing eyes suggested sound rather than color—they were laughing.

Their conference ended and Runyon rode on up the hill. Sylvia carried herself circumspectly enough as she went back into the house, but she was almost giddy with joy over the final words of that conference. Runyon had lowered his voice almost to a whisper, and had spoken with intensity as one sometimes speaks to children.

She did not ride that afternoon. It appeared that all her interests for the time being were indoors. She spent much of her time among the things which reminded her most strongly of Harboro; she sought out little services she could perform for him,to delight him when he returned. She talked with more than common interest with Antonia, following the old woman from kitchen to dining-room and back again. She seemed particularly in need of human companionship, of sympathy. She trusted the old servant without reserve. She knew that here was a woman who would neither see nor speak nor hear evil where either she or Harboro was concerned. Not that her fidelity to either of them was particular; it was the home itself that was sacred. The flame that warmed the house and made the pot boil was the thing to be guarded at any cost. Any winds that caused this flame to waver were evil winds and must not be permitted to blow. The old woman was covertly discerning; but she had the discretion common to those who know that homes are built only by a slow and patient process—though they may be destroyed easily.

When it came time to light the lamps Sylvia went up into her boudoir. She liberated the imprisoned currents up in the little mediæval lanterns. She drew the blindsso that she should feel quite alone. She had put on one of the dresses which made her look specially slim and soft and childlike. She knew the garment became her, because it always brought a tender expression to Harboro’s eyes.

And then she sat down and waited.

At eight o’clock Runyon came. So faint was his summons at the door that it might have been a lost bird fluttering in the dark. But Sylvia heard it. She descended and opened the door for him. In the dimly lighted hall she whispered: “Are you sure nobody saw you come?”

He took both her hands into his and replied: “Nobody!”

They mounted the steps like two children, playing a slightly hazardous game. “The cat’s away,” she said, her eyes beaming with joy.

He did not respond in words but his eyes completed the old saying.

They went up into the boudoir, and he put away his coat and hat.

They tried to talk, each seeking to create the impression that what was being saidwas quite important. But neither heard what the other said. They were like people talking in a storm or in a house that is burning down.

He took his place at the piano after a while. It seemed that he had promised to sing for her—for her alone. He glanced apprehensively toward the windows, as if to estimate the distance which separated him from the highway. It was no part of their plan that he should be heard singing in Sylvia’s room by casual passers-by on the Quemado Road.

He touched the keys lightly and when he sang his voice seemed scarcely to carry across the room. There was a rapid passage on the keyboard, like the patter of a pony’s hoofs in the distance, and then the words came:

“From the desert I come to thee

On my Arab shod with fire....”

It was a work of art in miniature. The crescendo passages were sung relatively with that introductory golden whisper as a standard. For the moment Sylvia forgot that the singer’s shoulders were beautifully compactand vigorous. She was visualizing the Bedouin who came on his horse to declare his passion.

“And I faint in thy disdain!...”

She stood near him, spellbound by the animation of his face, the seeming reality of his plea. He was not a singer; he was the Bedouin lover.

There was a fanatic ardor in the last phrase:

“Till the leaves of the Judgment Book unfold!”

He turned lightly away from the piano. He was smiling radiantly. He threw out his arms with an air of inviting approval; but the gesture was to her an invitation, a call. She was instantly on her knees beside him, drawing his face down to hers. His low laughter rippled against her face as he put his arms around her and drew her closer to him.

They were rejoicing in an atmosphere of dusky gold. The light from the mediæval lanterns fell on her hair and on his laughing face which glowed as with a kind of universalgood-will. A cloud of delicate incense seemed to envelop them as their lips met.

And then the shadow fell. It fell when the door opened quietly and Harboro came into the room.

He closed the door behind him and regarded them strangely—as if his face had died, but as if his eyes retained the power of seeing.

Sylvia drew away from Runyon, not spasmodically, but as if she were moving in her sleep. She left one hand on Runyon’s sleeve. She was regarding Harboro with an expression of hopeless bewilderment. She seemed incapable of speaking. You would not have said she was frightened. You would have thought: “She has been slain.”

Harboro’s lips were moving, but he seemed unable to speak immediately.

It was Sylvia who broke the silence.

“You shouldn’t have tricked me, Harboro!” she said. Her voice had the mournful quality of a dove’s.

He seemed bewildered anew by that. The monstrous inadequacy of it was too much for him. He had tricked her, certainly,and that wasn’t a manly thing to do. He seemed to be trying to get his faculties adjusted. Yet the words he uttered finally were pathetically irrelevant, it would have seemed. He addressed Runyon.

“Are you the sort of man who would talk about—about this sort of thing?” he asked.

Runyon had not ceased to regard him alertly with an expression which can be described only as one of infinite distaste—with the acute discomfort of an irrepressible creature who shrinks from serious things.

“I am not,” he said, as if his integrity were being unwarrantably questioned.

Harboro’s voice had been strained like that of a man who is dying of thirst. He went on with a disconcerting change of tone. He was trying to speak more vigorously, more firmly; but the result was like some talking mechanism uttering words without shading them properly. “I suppose you are willing to marry her?” he asked.

It was Sylvia who answered this. “He does not wish to marry me,” she said.

Harboro seemed staggered again. “I want his answer to that,” he insisted.

“Well, then, I don’t want to marry him,” continued Sylvia.

Harboro ignored her. “What do you say, Runyon?”

“In view of her unwillingness, and the fact that she is already married——”

“Runyon!” The word was pronounced almost like a snarl. Runyon had adopted a facetious tone which had stirred Harboro’s fury.

Something of the resiliency of Runyon’s being vanished at that tone in the other man’s voice. He looked at Harboro ponderingly, as a child may look at an unreasoning parent. And then he became alert again as Harboro threw at him contemptuously: “Go on; get out!”

PART VIISYLVIA

CHAPTER XXIX

Sylvia did not look at Runyon as he picked up his coat and hat and vanished. She did not realize that he had achieved a perfect middle ground between an undignified escape and a too deliberate going. She was regarding Harboro wanly. “You shouldn’t have come back,” she said. She had not moved.

“I didn’t go away,” said Harboro.

Her features went all awry. “You mean——”

“I’ve spent the day in the guest-chamber. I had to find out. I had to make sure.”

“Oh, Harboro!” she moaned; and then with an almost ludicrously swift return to habitual, petty concerns: “You’ve had no food all day.”

The bewildered expression returned to his eyes. “Food!” he cried. He stared at her as if she had gone insane. “Food!” he repeated.

She groped about as if she were in the dark. When her fingers came into contact with a chair she drew it toward her and sat down.

Harboro took a step forward. He meant to take a chair, too; but his eyes were not removed from hers, and she shrank back with a soft cry of terror.

“You needn’t be afraid,” he assured her. He sat down opposite her, slowly, as very ill people sit down.

As if she were still holding to some thought that had been in her mind, she asked: “Whatdoyou mean to do, then?”

He was breathing heavily. “What does a man do in such a case?” he said—to himself rather than to her, it might have seemed. “I shall go away,” he said at length. “I shall clear out.” He brought his hands down upon the arms of his chair heavily—not in wrath, but as if surrendering all hope of seeing clearly. “Though it isn’t a very simple thing to do,” he added slowly. “You see, you’re a part of me. At least, that’s what I’ve come to feel. And how can a man go away from himself? How can apart of a man go away and leave the other part?” He lifted his fists and smote his breast until his whole body shook. And then he leaned forward, his elbows on the arms of his chair, his hands clasped before him. He was staring into vacancy. He aroused himself after a time. “Of course, I’ll have to go,” he said. He seemed to have become clear on that one point. And then he flung himself back in his chair and thrust his arms out before him. “What were you driving at, Sylvia?” he asked.

“Driving at...?”

“I hadn’t done you any harm. Why did you marry me, if you didn’t love me?”

“I do love you!” She spoke with an intensity which disturbed him.

“Ah, you mean—you did?”

“I mean I do!”

He arose dejectedly with the air of a man who finds it useless to make any further effort. “We’ll not talk about it, then,” he said. He turned toward the door.

“I do love you,” she repeated. She arose and took a step toward him, though her limbs were trembling so that they seemedunable to sustain her weight. “Harboro!” she called as he laid his hand on the door. “Harboro! I want you to listen to me.” She sank back into her chair, and Harboro turned and faced her again wonderingly.

“If you’d try to understand,” she pleaded. “I’m not going to ask you to stay. I only want you to understand.” She would not permit her emotions to escape bounds. Something that was courageous and honorable in her forbade her to appeal to his pity alone; something that was shrewd in her warned her that such a course would be of no avail.

“You see, I was what people call a bad woman when you first met me. Perhaps you know that now?”

“Go on,” he said.

“But that’s such a silly phrase—a bad woman. Do you suppose I ever felt like abad woman—until now? Even now I can’t realize that the words belong to me, though I know that according to the rules I’ve done you a bad turn, Harboro.”

She rocked in silence while she gained control over her voice.

“What you don’t know,” she said finally, “is how things began for me, in those days back in San Antonio, when I was growing up. It’s been bad luck with me always; or if you don’t believe in luck, then everything has been a kind of trick played on me from the beginning. Not by anybody—I don’t mean that. But by something bigger. There’s the word Destiny....” She began to wring her hands nervously. “It seems like telling an idle tale. When you frame the sentences they seem to have existed in just that form always. I mean, losing my mother when I was twelve; and the dreadful poverty of our home and its dulness, and the way my father sat in the sun and seemed unable to do anything. I don’t believe hewasable to do anything. There’s the word Destiny again. We lived in what’s called the Mexican section, where everybody was poor. What’s the meaning of it; there being whole neighborhoods of people who are hungry half the time?

“I was still nothing but a child when I began to notice how others escaped from poverty a little—the Mexican girls and womenI lived among. It seemed to be expected of them. They didn’t think anything of it at all. It didn’t make any difference in their real selves, so far as you could see. They went on going to church and doing what little tasks they could find to do—just like other women. The only precaution they took when a man came was to turn the picture of the Virgin to the wall....”

Harboro had sat down again and was regarding her darkly.

“I don’t mean that I felt about it just as they did when I got older. You see, they had their religion to help them. They had been taught to call the thing they did a sin, and to believe that a sin was forgiven if they went and confessed to the priest. It seemed to make it quite simple. But I couldn’t think of it as a sin. I couldn’t clearly understand what sin meant, but I thought it must be the thing the happy people were guilty of who didn’t give my father something to do, so that we could have a decent place to live in. You must remember how young I was! And so what the other girls called a sin seemed to me ...oh, something that was untidy—that wasn’t nice.”

Harboro broke in upon her narrative when she paused.

“I’m afraid you’ve always been very fastidious.”

She grasped at that straw gratefully. “Yes, I have been. There isn’t one man in a hundred who appeals to me, even now.” And then something, as if it were the atmosphere about her, clarified her vision for the moment, and she looked at Harboro in alarm. She knew, then, that he had spoken sarcastically, and that she had fallen into the trap he had set for her. “Oh, Harboro! You!” she cried. She had not known that he could be unkind. Her eyes swam in tears and she looked at him in agony. And in that moment it seemed to him that his heart must break. It was as if he looked on while Sylvia drowned, and could not put forth a hand to save her.

She conquered her emotion. She only hoped that Harboro would hear her to the end. She resumed: “And when I began to see that people are expected to shapetheir own lives, mine had already been shaped. I couldn’t begin at a beginning, really; I had to begin in the middle. I had to go on weaving the threads that were already in my hands—the soiled threads. I met nice women after a while—women from the San Antonio missions, I think they were; and they were kind to me and gave me books to read. One of them took me to the chapel—where the clock ticked. But they couldn’t really help me. I think they did influence me more than I realized, possibly; for my father began to tell them I wasn’t at home ... and he brought me out here to Eagle Pass soon after they began to befriend me.”

Harboro was staring at her with a vast incredulity. “And then—?” he asked.

“And then it went on out here—though it seemed different out here. I had the feeling of being shut out, here. In a little town people know. Life in a little town is like just one checker-board, with a game going on; but the big towns are like a lot of checkerboards, with the men on some of them in disorder, and not being watched at all.”

Harboro was shaking his head slowly, and she made an effort to wipe some of the blackness from the picture. “You needn’t believe I didn’t have standards that I kept to. Some women of my kind would have lied or stolen, or they would have made mischief for people. And then there were the young fellows, the mere boys.... It’s a real injury to them to find that a girl they like is—is not nice. They’re so wonderfully ignorant. A woman is either entirely good or entirely bad in their eyes. You couldn’t really do anything to destroy their faith, even when they pretended to be rather rough and wicked. I wasn’t that kind of a bad woman, at least.”

Harboro’s brow had become furrowed, with impatience, seemingly. “But your marriage to me, Sylvia?” He put the question accusingly.

“I thought you knew—at first. I thought youmustknow. There are men who will marry the kind of woman I was. And it isn’t just the little or worthless men, either. Sometimes it is the big men, who can understand and be generous. Up to the time ofour marriage I thought you knew and that you were forgiving everything. And at last I couldn’t bear to tell you. Not alone from fear of losing you, but I knew it would hurt you horribly, and I hoped ... I had made up my mind ... Iwastruly loyal to you, Harboro, until they tricked me in my father’s house.”

Harboro continued to regard her, a judge unmoved. “And Runyon, Sylvia—Runyon?” he asked accusingly.

“I know that’s the thing you couldn’t possibly forgive, and yet that seems the slightest thing of all to me. You can’t know what it is to be humbled, and so many innocent pleasures taken away from you. When Fectnor came back ... oh, it seemed to me that life itself mocked me and warned me coldly that I needn’t expect to be any other than the old Sylvia, clear to the end. I had begun to have a little pride, and to have foolish dreams. And then I went back to my father’s house. It wasn’t my father; it wasn’t even Fectnor. It was Life itself whipping me back into my place again.

“... And then Runyon came. He meantpleasure to me—nothing more. He seemed such a gay, shining creature!” She looked at him in the agony of utter despair. “I know how it appears to you; but if you could only see how it seemed to me!”

“I’m trying,” said Harboro, unmoved.

“If I’d been a little field of grass for the sheep to graze on, do you suppose I shouldn’t have been happy if the birds passed by, or that I shouldn’t have been ready for the sheep when they came? If I’d been a little pool in the desert, do you suppose I wouldn’t have been happier for the sunlight, and just as ready for the rains when they came?”

He frowned. “But you’re neither grass nor water,” he said.

“Ah, I think I am just that—grass and water. I think that is what we all are—with something of mystery added.”

He seized upon that one tangible thought. “There you have it, thatsomething of mystery,” he said. “That’s the thing that makes the world move—that keeps people clean.”

“Yes,” she conceded dully, “or makes people set up standards of their own and compel other people to accept them whetherthey understand them or believe in them or not.”

When he again regarded her with dark disapproval she went on:

“What I wanted to tell you, Harboro, is that my heart has been like a brimming cup for you always. It was only that which ran over that I gave to another. Runyon never could have robbed the cup—a thousand Runyons couldn’t. He was only like a flower to wear in my hair, a ribbon to put on for an outing. But you ... you were the hearth for me to sit down before at night, a wall to keep the wind away. What was it you said once about a man and woman becoming one? You have been my very body to me, Harboro; and any other could only have been a friendly wind to stir me for a moment and then pass on.”

Harboro’s face darkened. “I was the favorite lover,” he said.

“You won’t understand,” she said despairingly. And then as he arose and turned toward the door again she went to him abjectly, appealingly. “Harboro!” she cried, “I know I haven’t explained it right, but Iwant you to believe me! It is you I love, really; it is you I am grateful to and proud of. You’re everything to me that you’ve thought of being. I couldn’t live without you!” She sank to her knees and covered her eyes with one hand while with the other she reached out to him: “Harboro!” Her face was wet with tears, now; her body was shaken with sobs.

He looked down at her for an instant, his brows furrowed, his eyes filled with horror. He drew farther away, so that she could not touch him. “Great God!” he cried at last, and then she knew that he had gone, closing the door sharply after him.

She did not try to call him back. Some stoic quality in her stayed her. It would be useless to call him; it would only tear her own wounds wider open, it would distress him without moving him otherwise. It would alarm old Antonia.

If he willed to come back, he would come of his own accord. If he could reconcile the things she had done with any hope of future happiness he would come back to her again.

But she scarcely hoped for his return. She had always had a vague comprehension of those pragmatic qualities in his nature which placed him miles above her, or beneath her, or beyond her. She had drunk of the cup which had been offered her, and she must not rebel because a bitter sediment lay on her lips. She had always faintly realized that the hours she spent with Runyon might some day have to be paid for in loneliness and despair.

Yet now that Harboro was gone she stood at the closed door and stared at it as if it could never open again save to permit her to pass out upon ways of darkness. She leaned against it and laid her face against her arm and wept softly. And then she turned away and knelt by the chair he had occupied and hid her face in her hands.

She knew he would no longer be visible when she went to the window. She had spared herself the sight of him on his way out of her life. But now she took her place and began, with subconscious hope, the long vigil she was to keep. She stared out on the road over which he had passed. If he cameback he would be visible from this place by the window.

Hours passed and her face became blank, as the desert became blank. The light seemed to die everywhere. The little home beacons abroad in the desert were blotted out one by one. Eagle Pass became a ghostly group of houses from which the last vestiges of life vanished. She became stiff and inert as she sat in her place with her eyes held dully on the road. Once she dozed lightly, to awaken with an intensified sense of tragedy. Had Harboro returned during that brief interval of unconsciousness? She knew he had not. But until the dawn came she sat by her place, steadfastly waiting.

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