The words of the negro song, in a negro woman’s voice, came floating into the room, mingled with the sounds of broom and scrubbing brush. They brought to Rhoda instant memory of Mary Ellen’s melodious tones, singing in happy unconsciousness of peril, and of her own strained and fearful attention as she listened to the footsteps steps of the marshal’s posse. And then like a flash passed before her mind’s eye the ashen face and shaking figure of Mary Ellen, as her father and Jim lifted her from the box that had almost been her deathbed. The numbing waters fell away, she raised her hand and pressed it against her heart with the impulsive, unconscious gesture he knew so well, and moved apart. “Jeff, it’s no use talking any more about this,” she said in tremulous accents. “The last time we said all that is to be said.” “Don’t say that! It makes everything so bare and hopeless! It makes me fear that you have killed your love. Rhoda, you do love me, yet?” She turned slowly toward him and lifted her downcast face, alight with all the glow that was in her heart. “Jeff,” and the word as it came from her tenderly smiling lips was a caress, “Jeff, I love you so much that my heart has made me forgive you even that you allowed Mary Ellen--Lear White--to be sold.” “My sweet! And I love you so much that my heart has made me forgive even your stealing her away!” For a moment it seemed to them that gray eyes and brown melted into each other. And then the comedy of their cross-conscienced hearts struck her sense of humor, the corners of her mouth trembled and deepened and a smile flashed over her face and sparkled in her eyes. At that they both laughed, softly, in the tenderness of perfect understanding. Then she saw the old baffled, determined look overspread his face as turning sharply he strode across the room and back. “My God, Rhoda! Why have our hearts snared us into this misery? Why don’t you loathe me as you do all that I believe in and stand for? Why can’t I condemn and scorn you as I do all the rest of your tribe? Why must I, when I detest and am injured by what is dearest to you, still see in you my ideal of all that is lovable and womanly? My love, my love, why can’t I hate you instead of loving you so that you are the only woman in all the world I want for my wife? Must our love be forever a curse instead of a blessing?” He flung himself into a chair beside the table, every muscle of his body expressive of anger and rebellion at the mysterious forces of human life that had played this scurvy trick upon them, pitted against each other loving heart and steadfast conscience and left them, like two cocks in a pit, to fight it out in a struggle to the death.