_Chapter XVII_
The magnificent wilderness into which rode Mark and Gloria King seemedto prostrate its august self to do them honour upon this their weddingmorning. Succeeding the paler tints of the earlier hour came the rareblue day. Last night's clouds had vanished; the air was clear and crisp,with still a hint of frost. On all hands had October in passing splashedthe world with colour. Along the creek the aspens danced and played andshivered in bright golden raiment; through the bushes there was aglimpse of vivid scarlet where the leaves of a dwarf maple were asbright as snow-plants. A little grove of gracefully slender poplarstrembled in yellow against the azure above. The clear, thin sunlightpricked out colours until it made the woods a riot of them, greens darkand light, the grey of sage, the white of a granite seam, the black of alava rock, and in the creek spray a brilliant vari-coloured rainbowsheen. They two, riding side by side, while the broad trail permitted,passed over the ridge and out of sight of the house. Immediately thesolitudes shut down about them with titanic walls. They rode down into along, shadowy hollow, out through a tiny verdant meadow fringed with therusty brown of sunflower leaves, and on up to the crest of the secondridge. Already they were alone in the world, a man and his mate, withonly infinity and its concrete symbols embracing them, ancient andageless trees, limitless sky, mile after mile of ridge and precipice andbarren peak. And upon them and about them and within them the utterserene hush of the Sierra.
With every swinging step of the horses taking them on, a new gladnessblossomed in King's heart. For they were pushing ever further into theportion of the world which he knew best, loved best. The present lefthim nothing to wish for; he had Gloria, and Gloria had elected to comewith him. Until high noon they would wind along, for the most partclimbing pretty steadily with the old trail--Indian trail, miners'trail, trail which even to-day seems to lead from the first generationof the twentieth century straight back into the heart of 1850 andbeyond. Here men did not penetrate save at long intervals; here was truesolitude. And soon, when they should leave this trail to travel asstraight a line as the broken country would allow toward Gus Ingle'scaves, they would enter a region given over entirely to the wild's ownbright-eyed, shy inhabitants.
There were red spots in Gloria's cheeks when they started. King soughtto guess at what might be the emotions of a young girl going on withGloria's present emotional adventure--vain task of a mere man seeking tofathom those troubled feminine depths!--marking that she was a littlenervous and distrait.
"I know the place Gus Ingle tried to describe," he said, "as well as Iknow my old hat. Or at least I'd have said so until he mentioned thethird cave. I've been there dozens of times, too, but I've got to seemore than two caves there yet."
Together they had read the crabbed lines in the Bible; they had beensilent thereafter as to each came imagined pictures like ghosts from thepast; ghosts of greed and envy and despair. Now Gloria mused aloud:
"I wonder--do you suppose we'll find it as he says?"
"At least we'll see about it. And whether there be heaps and piles ofred, red gold, as the tale telleth, be sure our trip is going to beworth the two days' ride. I'll show you such chasms and gorges and cragsas you've never turned those two lovely eyes of yours upon, Mrs. GloriaKing." (He couldn't abstain absolutely from all love-making.) "And alittle grove of sequoias which belongs to me. Or, at least, I believe Iam the only man who knows where they are. Friends of mine, those bigfellows are, five old noble-souled monarchs."
She looked interested and treated him to a fleeting smile, but askedcuriously:
"How can a man speak of a tree that way? As though it were alive--" Shebroke off, laughing, and amended: "But they _are_ alive, aren't they? Imean--human."
"Why, you poor little city-bred angel," he cried heartily. "You willanswer your own question inside of two days. No doubt I'm going to growjealous of old Vulcan and Thor and Majesty. Sure, I've named them," hechuckled. "And you'll come with me into their dim cathedral to-morrow atdusk and listen with me to their old sermon. A man ought to go to churchto them at least once a year, to keep his soul cleaned out and growingproperly."
Gloria appeared thoughtful; that she was interested just now less inthat of which he spoke than in the man himself he did not suspect. Shewas noting how he spoke of trees as friends; how he was different fromother men whom she knew in that he stood so much closer to the ancientmother, the wilderness now embracing them. Instinctively she knew thatit behoved her to penetrate as deeply as she might into the inner natureof this man who, hardly more than a pleasant, attractive strangeryesterday, was to-day her husband.
"What is the oldest thing in the world?" he asked her abruptly.
She wrinkled her brows prettily at him.
"Church to-morrow evening and school now?" she countered lightly.
"Answer," insisted King. "Just at a rough guess what would you say wasthe oldest thing in the world?"
Gloria cudgelled her brains. Finally, since he seemed quite serious, andshe knew that wisdom lay in pleasing the male of the species in smalland unimportant matters, she sought to reply.
"The Sphinx or the Pyramids, I'd guess," she offered.
"Naturally," he returned. "And what will you say when I introduce you tothe Pharaoh who was a big, husky giant before Thebes was thought of?"
Again she looked to see a twinkle of jest in his eyes.
"Pharaoh?" she said. "Just a tree? Over two or three thousand yearsold!"
"By at least another thousand," he rejoined triumphantly. "And asstaunch an old gentleman as you'll find."
Even Gloria, a poor little city-bred angel, must muse upon thestatement. Having caught her interest he told her picturesquely of hisold friends; how they had dwelt on serenely while peoples were born andempires rose and fell; while Rome smote Greece and both went down in thedust; while Columbus pushed his three boats across the seas; while theworld itself passed from one phase to another; how they were all butco-eternal with eternity.
"When you think how these old fellows were a thousand years old when theChrist was a little boy," he ended simply, "you will begin to realizethe sort of things they have a way of saying to you while you lie stilland look up and up, and still up among their branches that seem atnight to brush against the stars."
She let her fancies drift in the leash of his. But again they left thepicturesque ancient trees and returned to him. A little smile touchedher lips and was gone before he was sure of it; she was thinking that aman like King kept always in his heart something of the simplicity of alittle child; she wondered if she herself, though so much younger inactual years, were not worlds more sophisticated. For his part Kingnoted that she displayed to-day none of that chattering, singing gaietyof their former rides together; he remembered, sympathetically, that shehad had very little sleep last night, and that she had endured awearisome twenty-four hours before, and that the long, nervous strainunder which she had struggled must certainly have told upon her, bothphysically and mentally. So, believing that she would be grateful forsilence, he grew silent with her.
Further and ever further into the heart of the solitudes they rodethrough the quiet hours of the forenoon, with Gloria ever moreabstracted and Mark King holding apart from her, doing her reverence,drinking always deep of that soft, sweet beauty which was hers. Theyforsook the creeks where the yellow-leaved aspens fluttered their myriadlittle gleaming banners; they made slow, zigzag work of climbing aflinty-sided mountain; they looked back upon green meadow and gay poplargrove far below; they galloped their horses across a wide table-landover which shrilled the wind, already sharpened by the season for thework it had to do before many weeks passed. Though there were some fewlevel spaces, though now and then as King sought for her the easier waythey rode down short slopes, with every mile put behind them they hadclimbed perceptibly. Already Gloria had the sensation of being by theworld forgotten--though for her the world could not be forgot. A ridgefrom which they looked out across the peaks and valleys seemed to herlike an island, lost, remote,
eternally set apart from other peoplewhom she knew, from all her life as she had lived it. She went on and onand felt like one in a dream, journeying into a fierce, rugged land overwhich lay a spell of enchantment, a spell that had been cast over itbefore King's all but immortal trees had burst from the seeds, so thatnow, while the outside world pulsed and beat with life, and swung backand forth with its pendulous progress, here all was unchanged,changeless.
King led her, well before midday, to the spot in which from the first hehad planned that they would noon. A forest pool ringed with boulders,which were green with moss under the splashing of the water from above,where the swaying pines mirrored themselves and shivered in the littlebreeze which ruffled the clear, cold water. Here was a tiny uplandmeadow and much rich grass; here a sheltered spot where Gloria might sitin the sun and be protected from the colder air.
He was quick to help her to dismount and noted that she came downstiffly; the eyes which she turned to him were heavy with fatigue; someof the rose flush had faded from her cheeks.
"Maybe I shouldn't have let you come after all, dear," he saidcontritely. "These are harder trails than we've ridden before, and we'vehad to keep at it steadier."
There was an effort in her smile answering him.
"The last two days _have_ been hard to get through with," she said asshe yielded to his insistence and sat down on the sun-warmedpine-needles. "I am sorry I am so--so----"
He did not allow her to run down the elusive word.
"Nonsense," he told her heartily. "You've got a right to be tired. Butwhen you've had some hot lunch and a cup of hot coffee you'll be tip-topagain. You'll see."
King unsaddled and tethered the horses where they could browse and restand roll; built his little fire and went about lunch-getting with a joyhe had never known in the old accustomed routine before. Now and then heglanced toward Gloria; he could not help that. But he saw that she waslying back, her eyes closed, and while his heart went out to her he didnot force his sympathy on her. She was tired and, what was more, she hadevery right and reason to be tired. He hoped that she might get threewinks of sleep. When he came near her for the coffee-pot he tiptoed. Sheseemed to be asleep.
But Gloria was not asleep. Never had her mind raced so. It was done andshe was Mark King's wife! Higher and higher loomed that fact above allother considerations. But there were other considerations; her fatherhurt, she did not know how badly; her mother mystified, by now perhapsinformed of Gloria's marriage; Gratton with the poison extracted fromhis fangs had the fangs still; gold ahead somewhere, in caves where menlong ago had laboured and fought and snarled at one another likestarving wolves and died; Brodie somewhere, Brodie with the horribleface. She shivered and stirred restlessly, and King, who saw everything,thought that she had dreamed a bad dream. But lunch was ready; he cameto her with plate and cup. And again Gloria did her best to smilegratefully.
"You are so good to me, Mark," she said. Her eyes were thoughtful; wouldhe always be good to her? Even when--but she was too weary to think. Itseemed to her that only now was she beginning to feel the effects of allshe had been through.
"I want to learn how to be good to you, wife of mine," he said verygently. "That is all on earth I ask. Just to make you happy."
"You love me so much, Mark?" she asked, as one who wondered at what shehad read in his low voice and glimpsed in his eyes.
"Gloria," he told her gently, "I don't understand this thing they calllove yet; it is too new, too wonderful. But I do know that in all theworld there is nothing else that matters."
"Not even Gus Ingle's red, red gold?" she said rather more lightly thanshe had spoken.
"Not even Gus Ingle's red, red gold."
She looked at him long and curiously.
"You would do anything you could to make me happy? Anything, Mark?"
"I pray with all my heart and soul that I always may!"
Gloria seemed to rest through the noon hour and to brighten. When shesaw him the second time look at the sun she got up from the ground andsaid:
"Time to go on? I'm ready. And after that banquet I feel all _me_again!"
He laughed and went off after the horses, singing at the top of hisvoice. She stood very still, looking off after him, her brows puckeringinto a shadowy frown. Oh, if she could only read herself as he allowedher to read him; if she could only be as sure of Gloria as she was ofMark; if she could only look deep into her heart as she looked into his.But she could not! His heart was like the clear pool just yonder acrosswhich the sunshine lay and far down in which she could see the stonesand pebbles as through so much clear glass; hers was like the rushingstream above, eddying and swirling and hiding itself under its own lightspray. All day long she had tried to see what lay under the surface._Did she love Mark King_? She had thrilled to him as she had thrilled tono other man; but that had been in the springtime. Twice then she hadbeen sure that she loved him. But that was so long ago. And now that shehad allowed him to carry her out of the quicksands? What now? She was soborne down by all that she had lived through; he was so much a part ofthe mountainous solitudes towering about them. And was she one to lovethe wilderness--for long? Or did it not begin to bear down upon heruncertain spirit? Did it not menace and frighten and, in the end, wouldit not repel? Oh, if she had only let him go on alone this morning; ifshe had remained where she could rest and think and thus come to seeclearly, even into her own troubled heart!
Their first hour after lunch led them through a region which, givenover to silence itself, denied them any considerable opportunity forconversation. King rode ahead, turning off to the left from theirresting-place by the pool, and riding through a sea of grey brush,following a narrow trail made by deer. Then the mountain-side reared itsbarrier and made all forward and upward progress slow and toilsome.Three times they dismounted and King led the horses; here Gloria clungto the steep mountain-side, looking fearfully down into the monstergorge carved at its base, dwelling with fascinated fancies on thethought of slipping, losing handhold and foothold and plunging downamong the jagged boulders strewing the lower levels. There was really nogreat danger, she told herself over and over; King's cheery callsreassured her; no danger so long as they went forward on foot. But nowand then when a horse's foot slipped and a wild cascade of loose soiland rocks went hurtling downward, she grew rigid with apprehension.
But there was only an hour of this. Thereafter they rode down a longslope and into a long, narrow, twisting ravine, rocky cliffs on one handand a noisy stream on the other, a fair trail underfoot. Nearly alwaysnow King rode ahead, finding the way for her; and Gloria, her spiritsdrooping again with the advancing afternoon, vaguely oppressed by thesolemn stillness about her, was glad that she too could be silent. Whenhe did call to her she needed only nod or smile; he turned to point outsome rare view that appealed to him, a vista worth her seeing, a cascadeor a fall of cliff, or a ferny nook, or perhaps a late ceanothus-blossom. He pointed out a scampering Douglas squirrel and had herhearken to a quail.
"We're already in the finest timber belt in the world," he told her,full of enthusiastic loyalty to his beloved mountains.
Thus, he leading the way, she following with head down and shouldersdrooping, they came about four o'clock to a small meadow, cliff-ringed,studded with big yellow pines and here and there graced with an incensecedar. Stopping in the open, sitting sideways in the saddle, he waitedfor her.
"And what do you think of this, Miss Gloria?" he called gaily as herhorse thrust his black nose through the alders down by the creek.
Gloria drew rein and looked at him with large eyes across the twentypaces separating them.
"I can't go any further," she said bleakly. "I'm tired out!"
He was quick to see a gathering of tears, and swung down from his horseand went to her with long strides, his own eyes filled with concern.
"Poor little kidlet," he said humbly. "I've let you do yourself up...."
And it was his duty, his privilege, and no one's else in the world, toshelter her, t
o stand between her and all hardship. He put out his armsto take her into them quite as he could have picked up a little maid ofsix, something stirring in the depths of him which in man is twin to thematernal instinct in woman. But Gloria said hurriedly: "Please, Mark, Iam so tired ..." and drew back, and he let his hands fall to his side.For a second time her act hurt him; her gesture was akin to locking adoor last night. But in a moment, his pity and loyalty and staunch faithin her crowding the small ache out of his heart, he was unrolling apack, making a temporary couch for her and commanding her lovingly justto lie down and look up at the tree-tops above her, and rest while hestaked out the horses. Sensing that perhaps the very bigness andmajestic silence of these uplands might rest heavy upon her spirit andperhaps depress if not actually awake in her an emotion akin to fear, hestrove to cheer her by his own blithe acceptance of the fortune of thehour. He told her heartily that she had earned a rest if any one everhad; that it was well, after all, to get an early start at pitchingcamp; that he was going to make his lady-love as cosy here in his bigoutdoor home as was ever princess in castle walls. Gloria shivered andthrew herself face down on the blankets. Gloria did not know whatpossessed her; she fought for repression, hiding her face from him. Outof a hideously stern world a black spirit had leaped upon her; itclutched at her throat, it dragged at her heart. When King called acheery word from beyond the thicket where he had gone with the horses,she could have screamed. She was so nervous that now and again a fiercetremor shook her from head to foot.
* * * * *
King was counting it fortunate that they were granted so likely a campsite for the night. He looked up at the tall black cliffs shutting inthe little meadow; they would hold back the night winds from Gloria. Hechose the spot, well back from the creek, where she would sleep. Highoverhead, like brooding giants, stood the upright pines. Where a littleclump of mere youngsters, lusty fellows not a score of years old, hadthe air of pressing close together as though thus with their combinedstrength they sought to match the strength of their aloof parents, acompact grove to make a further shelter against the mountain air, Gloriawould sleep. He stretched a strip of canvas from tree to tree, making afive-foot wall of it. Close by he started his fire, knowing fromexperience oft repeated how a cheery blaze in the forest may dispelshadows within even as it makes the sombrest of shadows dance gailyunder the trees; to one side he laid many resinous faggots, planning ontheir crackling light later on when the dark came. He ringed his firewith rocks, lugging them as heavy as he could carry up from the creekside, making the rudest of fireplaces. But it had the merit that itthrew the heat back toward his extended canvas, and there between itwould be snug and warm. All about him, as he laboured, was the singingof water and, high in air, the singing of pine tops. They made merrymusic and King, gone down to the stream to fill his coffee-pot, sangwith it from a full, brimming heart. Gloria was tired, but she wasresting now. And in a little while, when dark came, he and she would sitby his fire and look into it and talk in hushed voices, hand locked inhand; they would watch for the first of the big blazing stars to comeout--he and Gloria, alone in the wilderness.
He saw a trout swinging lazily in a quiet pool. Trout for Gloria! Heglanced toward where she lay; he was glad that she was not looking. Itwould be a surprise for her. He hurried to his kit in his pack, got outhook and line, baited with a tiny bit of red flannel, and went back tothe creek. For he knew that it was not likely that the trout here couldhave had any remembered encounters with man; they were plentiful andmight, like many other sorts of beings, be lured to their undoing bycuriosity and greed. He cut a willow pole, stood back and cast out hisgay bit of bait, letting it drift with the riffles. There came a quicktug, another, sharp and vigorous, and he swung his prize out of thewater, breaking the surface into scattering jewels, flashing in thesunlight as it struck against the grass along the creek's edge.
Dusk gathered while he worked over his fire. The aroma of boiling coffeerose, crept through the air, blended with the aromas of the woods. Hehad made toast, holding the bread to the coals upon a sharpened stick.There were strips of crisp bacon garnishing a trout browned to the lastpainstaking turn. There were fried potatoes, cut by King's pocket-knifeinto thin strips and turned into gold by the alchemy of cooking. He setout his dishes upon a flat-topped rock, replenished his fire, threw onsome fresh-cut green cedar boughs for their delightful fragrance, andwent to call Gloria.
* * * * *
Gloria, too tired bodily and mentally to wage a winning battle againstthose black vapours which flock so frequently about luckless youth, hadsuffered and yielded and gone down in misery. She had been crying, justwhy she knew not; crying because she could not help it. Hers was a stateof overwrought nerves which forbade clear thinking, which distorted andwarped and magnified. The babble of the water which had been music toKing was to her a chorus of jeering voices; the wind in the pines aneerie moaning as of lost spirits wailing; the trees themselves, mergingwith the dusk, were brooding, shadowy giant things which she suddenlyboth feared and hated; the cliffs rising against the sky loomed so nearand so gigantically tall that she felt as though they were pressing inupon her to suffocate her, to crush her, to annihilate her. The worldwas turning black with the night; the night rushed, treading out thelast gleam of sunlight; even the one star which she had glimpsed throughher tears impressed her only with its remoteness. She was frightened;not because of any physical violence, for Mark King stood between herand that. But of vague horrors. She thought of San Francisco; of her ownbright room there; of the lights in the streets, of pedestrians andmotors and street-cars filling that other steel-canoned wilderness withfamiliar noises. And somehow, San Francisco seemed further away,immeasurably further away, than that one remote star blazing through thevastness of space.
"A cup of coffee and a bit of supper," King said gently. "You'll feel alot better."
She rose wearily and followed him. Without a word she dropped downbeside his banquet, putting out a listless hand to her tin cup. Thefirelight upon her face showed him her thoughtful eyes; but they wereturned not toward him but toward the bed of coals. He had anticipatedher lively surprise at the trout; she pushed the brown morsel aside,saying absently:
"I am not hungry. It was good of you to go to all of this trouble. I amafraid I am not much of a camper." She forced the shadow of a smile withthe admission.
"Tuckered out," he thought as he looked into her face across which lightand shadow flickered as flame and smoke in the camp-fire came and wentfitfully, twisted by the evening breeze. "Clean tuckered out."
Gloria, feeling his gaze so steady upon her, turned her eyes toward his,eyes heavy and sober with her drooping spirit. As the flames frolickedabout the pitch-pine he had tossed to the coals, he saw the traces oftears. He said nothing, supposing that he understood; he but strove theharder to be good to her, to share with her some of that rare joyfilling his own heart. He sought with unobtrusive tenderness toanticipate her slightest want; he jumped to his feet and brought her acup of water; he shoved aside a burning branch which rolled impudentlytoo near the divine foot; he removed the offending fish from under hernostrils hastily and half apologetically; he piled the fire high when hesaw her shiver. And finally when she pushed her cup away and let her twohands drop into her lap he gathered the dishes and carried them away tothe nearest pool to wash them, leaving Gloria silent and thoughtful,brooding over his fire.
When he came back to her in the hush of the first hour of night, hethought that he understood her need for silence, and spoke onlyinfrequently and briefly, and very, very softly, calling her attentionnow to the last lingering light upon the piney ridge behind them or tothe liquid music of the creek, which, with the coming of night, seemedto grow clearer and finer and sweeter, or finally to the big starburning gloriously in the perfect deep-blue sky.
"And now," he said, taking up his short-handled axe, "I am going to makefor my lady-love the finest couch for tranquil, restful sleep thatmo
rtal ever had."
As he strode away toward a grove of firs he was lost to her eyes beforehe had gone a hundred paces. The night came so swiftly it seemed to herfeverish fancies that in the dark the big tree trunks were huddlingcloser together. In a moment she heard the sound of his axe, strikingsoftly through green juicy branches. He worked swiftly, grudging everyminute away from her. And then, with his arms full of the fragrant,balsamy boughs, he stopped and let them slip down to the ground andhimself sat down upon a log and filled his pipe with slow fingers. He'dforce himself to smoke one pipe before he went back to her, thinkingthat she would be grateful for a few moments alone.
Almost with the first puff of smoke there came to him Gloria's piercingscream. His heart stopping, he jumped up and ran through the trees toher, shouting: "Gloria I Gloria! I'm coming. What is it?"
Gloria was cowering against the nearest tree, her face showingfrightened in the firelight, her eyes wide with nervous horror.
"There is something there ... in the bushes!" she cried excitedly. "Iheard it moving...."
He looked where she pointed. Down by the creek, just waddling back intothe alders, was a fat old porcupine, dimly seen in the fringe of thecamp-fire. But King did not laugh. His first impulse upon him,strengthened by Gloria's helplessness, he took her into his arms,holding her close to him.
"Why did you leave me?" asked Gloria petulantly. "So long."
He had been away from her fifteen minutes while he cut an armful offir-boughs, and thereafter filled and lighted his pipe--and to Gloriathe time had seemed long! Little enough of love's confession, surely,but a golden crumb to a man's starving love. He drew her closer; theirfaces, ruddy with fire-glow, each tense with its own emotion, were closetogether.
"Oh!" cried Gloria. She wrenched away from him violently. "You--you hurtme. Let me go!" She buried her face in her hands; he saw her shoulderslift and droop; he heard her sob: "Oh, I was a fool----"
His arms had dropped to his sides and he stood for a moment speechless,staring at her as across a chasm shadow-filled.
"Gloria," he said, bewildered.
But now her hands, too, were at her sides, clenched and nervous; herwhite face was lifted and she broke out passionately into hot words; hesaw her breast heaving and sensed that she was stirred to depths neveruntil now plumbed. What he could not glimpse were the vague,unreasonable reasons, the distorted horrors grinning at her among thespaces of black gloom into which her spirit had sunk; had he been afancy-sick poet, a pale-blooded creature given to blue devils andnightmare conjecture, he might have come somewhere near anunderstanding. But being plain Mark King, a straightforward, healthy,and unjaundiced man, his comprehension found never a clue to a conditionwhich in Gloria was hardly other than an inevitable result of all thathad gone before.
"I was half-mad last night," she panted. "There was no way to turn. Thatbeast of a man drove me to desperation. Then you came, and--and----Oh,I wish that I were dead!"
Incredulous, amazed, near stupefied, he stood rooted to the ground.
"I don't understand," he said dully after a long silence broken only bya tumble and frolic of the water and Gloria's quick, hard breathing. Hestrove to be very gentle with her. "Just what is it? Can you tell me,dear?"
"Don't call me dear ... like that," she cried sharply. "Just as though Iwere your ... _property_." He saw the roundness of her eyes. Sheshuddered. "You knew that I was driven to it, to save my name, to stophideous gossip...."
In her disordered mind she had been flung, as upon shoals, to many bleakpoints of view; she had blamed fate for her undoing, she had blamedGratton, she had laid the responsibility upon her mother for havingallowed her to drift; but always she had looked upon herself as thevictim. Now, in her agitation, which had risen close to hysteria, it wassuddenly Mark King whom she blamed for everything; he, in the guise offate, had betrayed her!
"You saw that I was half dead with terror; that I hardly knew what I wasdoing; that all I could think of was escape from the horrible trap thathad been set for me; you----"
"So that was it?" But still his tone was utterly devoid of any emotionsave that of incredulity. "You mean you didn't love me, Gloria?"
"When did you ever ask me if I loved you?"
"But you ... you married me.... Great God!" He ran his hand across hisbrow as though to brush away an obsession. "Not loving me, you marriedme just to save yourself from possible scandal?"
"What girl wouldn't?" she cried wildly. "Driven as I was?"
He tried to think with all of that calm deliberation which this momentso plainly required. In mind he went back stage by stage through all oflast night's events. And so he came in retrospect in due time to themoment when he had come to the porch and had looked in through thewindow to take his last farewell of her; when he had seen her standingat Gratton's side. She had drooped so like a figure of despondency; shehad lifted her head slowly at the "judge's" question. And then there hadoccurred that sudden change in her bearing and in her voice alike, whenabruptly she had cried out: "No. No and no and no!"
"Tell me," said King heavily, "when you refused to marry Gratton lastnight--did you know that I was outside?"
"Yes," she answered. She wondered why he asked. "There was a mirror; Isaw your reflection in it."
"If I had not come--would you have gone on with the thing?" Hehesitated, then said harshly: "Would you have married him?"
"I don't know. Oh," she exclaimed, twisting at her hands, "how can Itell what I would have done? driven one way, torn another----"
"You might have married him? You but chose me as the lesser of twoevils? Was that it?"
"I tell you I don't know! I only know that I was hideously compromised;I would never have dared show my face again in San Francisco--anywhere--itwould have killed me----"
And even yet there was in King's face only a queer tortured incredulity.For a long time neither moved nor spoke. His eyes were on her, hersintently on him. When he answered it was in a voice from which all ofto-day's joyousness had fled.
"I'm going to make your bed, Gloria," he said evenly. "Near the fire,which I'll keep going. I'll make mine on the outside, so you need notbe afraid of any prowling animal. Then in the morning we will talk."
She watched him go back for his scattered fir-boughs. And even Glorianoted how heavy was his walk. But she could not guess how when he wasalone with his trees, and the darkness dropped curtainwise between himand her he went down on both knees and buried his face in one of thosesame fallen sprays from the fir.