There had been no sound to herald her coming as she darted up to the door. Reeling giddily there in the middle of the room, he had not even heard the one low cry that she choked back as she stopped at the threshold, but he half turned that moment and met the benumbed horror of Dryad Anderson's eyes. Minute after minute he merely stood and stared back at her stupidly, while bit by bit every detail of her transformation began to penetrate his brain, still foggy with the force of the blow that had laid his chin wide open. Her tumbled hair was piled high upon her head; she was almost tall with the added height of the high-heeled satin slippers; more slender than ever in the bespangled clinging black skirt and sleeveless scarlet waist which the old cloak, slipping unheeded from her shoulders, had disclosed. As his brain began to clear Young Denny forgot the dripping blood that made his white face ghastly, he forgot the stinging odor of the broken demijohn, thick in the room--forgot everything but Judge Maynard's face when the latter had looked up and found him standing at the Tavern door. He knew now what the light was that had lurked in their shifty depths; it was fear--fear that he--Young Denny--might speak up in that moment and disclose all the hypocrisy of his suave lies. He even failed to see the horror in the eyes of the girl before him. Sudden, reckless laughter rang from his lips. "Dryad," he cried out. "Dryad, it's all right--it's always been all right--with us! They lied--they lied and they knew they were lying!" She shrank back, as if all the strength had been drained from her knees, as he lurched unsteadily across toward her and reached out his arms. But at the touch of his hands upon her shoulders the power of action came rushing back into her limbs. She shuddered and whirled--and shook off his groping fingers. Her own hands flashed out and held his face away from her. "Don't you touch me!" she panted huskily. "Oh, you--you--don't you even dare to come near me!" He tried to explain--tried to follow her swift flight as she leaped back, but his feet became entangled in the cloak on the floor and brought him heavily to his knees. He even tried to follow her after she had been swallowed up in the shadows outside, until he realized dully that his shuffling feet would not go where his whirling head directed them. Once he called out to her, before he staggered back to the kitchen door, and received no answer. With his hands gripping the door frame he eased himself down to the top step and sat rocking gently to and fro. "S'all right," he muttered once, his tongue thick with pain. "S'always been all right!" And he laughed aloud, a laugh of utter confidence in spite of all its unsteadiness. "Twelve thousand dollars," he said, "and--and he never whipped me! He never could--not the best day he ever lived!" CHAPTER VII