Charles could find no words with which to answer; he heard her laugh softly as she stepped close to him and put her hand to his lapel and held it as she might have done were she pinning a flower upon it. "Your good deeds tie your tongue," she said, "but you can't lie. You would lie out of this if you could. You tried to hide that act of goodness by what really was a sly trick, but I saw through it. I saw through it because I wanted it to be that way." He caught her hand and held it, telling himself that it was a brief offense surely when he had made up his mind to give her up forever. But, oh, how it throbbed and pleaded in his clasp! Each little finger seemed to have a soul of its own. He dared not look into her eyes. Their drooping lashes seemed breakable bars between him and a life of eternal bliss. "Are you angry because I told them?" she asked. "Not if it pleased you," he said, passionately. "That is all I live for--to please you." "Do you mean it? Do you mean it, Charlie?" and she pressed his fingers--his calloused fingers--in her soft ones. She raised her face to his. "Oh, I know you do, but I am dying to hear you say so." He nodded. He took a deep, quivering breath and slowly exhaled it; she felt him trembling; his face was grim and pale. "I have no right," he said, "to talk to you this way--to allow you to--to talk to me in a way that would be impossible if you knew my whole history." He was speaking now as a man might just before the black cap was placed over his face. "I ought not to have come here to your father's house without--without telling him and you the full truth. I am a fugitive from the law. I can say that much without breaking my word to others. At any moment I may be caught and imprisoned. In that case your family would be mentioned as harboring me, and I had no right to let you unsuspectingly run that risk." "You--you a fugitive from the law?" Mary cried. "You!" He released her hand and mutely nodded. He kept his eyes now on the ground. With a motion as swift as the flight of a hummingbird she caught his hand. She held it against her breast and forced his eyes to rise to hers. "I won't believe it! I won't! I won't! I won't! God will not let that be true, Charlie. You've come into my tormented life like a sweet dream of everything that is good and noble. You can't make me believe it. You have reasons for deceiving me. What they are I don't know, but what you say is not true. It would kill me to believe it. When Albert Frazier mentioned it I knew that it was too absurd to think about."