They drove out into the prairie and the night; the stars looking down, smiling, as in the morning which was so long ago, the man had smiled,--looking upward. "Tiny, tiny mortal," they twinkled, each to the other. "So small and hot, and rebellious. Tiny, tiny, mortal!" But the man covered his face with his hands, shutting them out. CHAPTER VI--BY A CANDLE'S FLAME Asa Arnold sat in the small upstairs room at the hotel of Hans Becher. It was the same room that Ichabod and Camilla had occupied when they first arrived; but he did not know that. Even had he known, however, it would have made slight difference; nothing could have kept them more constantly in his mind than they were at this time. He had not slept any the night before; a fact which would have spoken loudly to one who knew him well; and this morning he was very tired. He lounged low in the oak chair, his feet on the bed, the usual big cigar in his mouth. This morning, the perspective of the little man was anything but normal. Worse than that, he could not reduce it to the normal, try as he might. His meeting with Camilla yesterday had produced a deep and abiding shock; for either of them to have been so moved signified the stirring of dangerous forces. They--and especially himself--who had always accepted life, even crises, so calmly; who had heretofore laughed at all display of emotion--for them to have acted as they had, for them to have spoken to each other the things they had spoken, the things they could not forget, that he never could forgive--it was unbelievable! It upset all the established order of things! His anger of yesterday against Camilla had died out. She was not to blame; she was a woman, and women were all alike. He had thought differently before; that she was an exception; but now he knew better. One and all they were mere puppets of emotion, and fickle. In a measure, though, as he had excused Camilla he had incriminated Ichabod. Ichabod was the guilty one, and a man. Ichabod had filched from him his possession of most value; and without even the form of a by-your-leave. The incident of last evening at the saloon (for he had heard of it in the hour, as had every one in the little town) had but served to make more implacable his resentment. By the satire of circumstances it had come about that he again, Asa Arnold, had been the cause of another's defending the honor of his own wife,--for she was his wife as yet,--and that other, the defender, was Ichabod Maurice!