"I’ll never let you alone as long as there’s a breath left in my body," Jane snarled. "You know what you are; you are a disgrace to the county. You are a close-fisted, bad woman—as bad as they make them. You ought to be drummed out of the community, and you would be, too, if you didn’t have so much ill-gotten gains laid up." There was a pause, for Jane was out of breath. Ann leaned over the fence, crushing her sheet of paper in her tense fingers. "I’ll tell you something," she said, her face white, her eyes flashing like those of a powerful beast goaded to desperation by an animal too small and agile to reach—"I’ll tell you one thing. For reasons of my own I’ve tried to listen to certain spiritual advice about loving enemies. Jesus Christ laid the law down, but He lived before you was born, Jane Hemingway. There isn’t an angel at God’s throne to-day that could love you. I’d as soon try to love a hissing rattlesnake, standing coiled in my path, as such a dried-up bundle of devilment as you are. Could I hit back at you now? _Could_ I? Huh! I could tell you something, you old fool, that would humble you in the dust at my feet and make you crawl home with your nose to the earth like a whipped dog. And I reckon I’m a fool not to do it, when you are pushing me this way. You come to gloat over me because your rotten body feels a little bit stronger than it did. I could make you forget your dirty carcass. I could make you so sick at the soul you’d vomit a prayer for mercy every minute the rest of your life. But I won’t do it, as mad as I am. I’ll not do it. You go your way, and I’ll go mine." Jane Hemingway stared wildly. The light of triumph had died out in her thin, superstitious face. She leaned, as if for needed support, on the fence only a few feet from her enemy. Superstition was her weakest point, and it was only natural now for her to fall under its spell. She recalled Ann’s fierce words prophesying some mysterious calamity which was to overtake her, and placed them beside the words she had just had hurled at her, and their combined effect was deadening. "You think you know lots," she found herself saying, mechanically. "Well, I know what I _know_!" Ann retorted, still furious. "You go on about your business. You’d better let me alone, woman. Some day I may fasten these two hands around that scrawny neck of yours and shake some decency into you." Jane shrank back instinctively. She was less influenced, however, by the threat of bodily harm than by the sinister hint, now looming large in her imagination, that had preceded it. Ann was moving away, and she soon found herself left alone with thoughts which made any but agreeable companions.