“Come, what is it? If it’s that I’m to dangle round as I’ve been doing for the past two months, let’s not waste time over that; I’m not that kind of a man. There’s too much for me to do to waste my time and thoughts hanging round a girl who’s only fooling with me.” “I was not fooling,” she said humbly; “I meant it all.” “Evidently we didn’t both mean the same thing.” “No, but now that we understand, don’t go off this way saying it’s to be good-by for keeps. I shall be so lonely without you. I trust in you so. I lean on you--” “Lean on the Colonel,” he interrupted, almost brutally. “He’s a more reliable staff than I am.” “But we can still be friends,” she urged, not appearing to notice his harshness. “No, we’ll not be friends.” Looking down at her he forgot his sternness and his voice grew suddenly roughened with feelings he could not disguise. “I can’t be your friend, June Allen. There may be men who can be the friend of the women they feel to as I do to you, but I’m not that kind. I can be your husband, only that. There’s to be no play at friendship where I’m concerned, no taking your hand to shake when I want to take you in my arms and keep you there, where no other man in the world can lay his finger on you or think of you as something he can try to win. You must belong to me, want to belong to me, come to me of your own free will, or else we must be strangers.” He took her hand, lifted it from his arm and with a short “Good-by” turned and left the room. June stood under the chandelier listening to his retreating footsteps as they passed along the hall and then down the outside stairs. She remained motionless, looking down, her ear strained to catch the diminishing footfalls as they reached the end of the steps and were deadened in the dust of the street. He was leaving her never to come back, disappearing from her life and the place he had of late taken in it, into the night and the distance. As she listened her heart momently grew heavier, the sense of empty desertion about her became suddenly overwhelming. “Everybody I care for is going away from me,” she whispered to herself. “Soon there won’t be anybody left.” CHAPTER V “HER FEET GO DOWN TO DEATH” Jerry was in a bad temper. For some days he had been disturbed by rumors of Rion Gracey’s attentions to June. In the long twilights of the summer evenings Rion had been constantly seen mounting the steps of the Murchison mansion. The single state of the Gracey boys had long been a matter of comment, and, as their riches grew it was regarded with increasing wonderment. Black Dan’s heart may have been buried in the grave of his child-wife, but Rion had never paid any attention to any woman. Therefore, when it was known of men that he was a frequent visitor at the Allens’, the little world in which he was a marked man began to whisper.