Presently, when he had helped himself to food, he went back to the girl who had seated herself on a log, at the farther side of the little clearing. "You seem fairly comfortable here," he said. She did not speak. "You and my man get along nicely, I take it. He has been kind to you?" Still she did not speak. He spoke sharply, "Look here, my girl, you can't keep this up, you know. Say what you have to say, and let's get it over." All the time, she had been regarding him intently--her wide, blue eyes filled with wondering pain. "How could you?" she said at last. "Oh, how could you do such a thing?" His face flushed. "I did it because you have driven me mad, I guess. From the first time I saw you, I have wanted you. I have tried again and again, in the last three years, to approach you; but you would have nothing to do with me. The more you spurned me, the more I wanted you. Then this man, King, came. You were friendly enough, with him. It made me wild. From that day when I met you in the mountains above Lone Cabin, I have been ready for anything. I determined if I could not win you by fair means, I would take you in any way I could. When my opportunity came, I took advantage of it. I've got you. The story is already started that you were the painter's mistress, and that you have committed suicide. You shall stay here, a while, until the belief that you are dead has become a certainty; then you will go East with me." "But you cannot do a thing so horrible!" she exclaimed "I would tell my story to the first people we met." He laughed grimly, as he retorted with brutal meaning, "You do not seem to understand. You will be glad enough to keep the story a secret--when the time comes to go." Bewildered by fear and shame, the girl could only stammer, "How could you--oh how could you! Why, why--" "Why!" he echoed. Then, as he went a step toward her, he exclaimed, with reckless profanity, "Ask the God who made me what I am, why I want you! Ask the God who made you so beautiful, why!" He moved another step toward her, his face flushed with the insane passion that mastered him, his eyes burning with the reckless light of one past counting the cost; and the girl, seeing, sprang to her feet, in terror. Wheeling suddenly, she ran into the cabin, thinking to shut and bar the door. She reached the door, and swung it shut, but the bar was gone. While he was in the cabin he had placed it out of her reach. Putting his shoulder to the door, the man easily forced it open against her lighter weight. As he crossed the threshold, she sprang to the farthest corner of the little room, and cowered, trembling--too shaken with horror to cry out. A moment he paused; then started toward her. At that instant, the convict burst through the underbrush into the little opening. Hearing the sound, Rutlidge wheeled and sprang to the open door. The convict was breathing heavily from the exertion of a hard run.