“Till the failure of the Valiant Corporation, he had never heard of Damory Court, much less been aware that he owned it. It wasn’t because he loved it that he came here—no! How could it be? He had never set foot in Virginia in his mortal life.” She put up her hands to her throat with a start. “Came?” she echoed. “Came!” “But if you think that even he could be so crassly stupid, so monumentally blind to all that is really fine and beautiful—” [Pg 172] “Oh!” she cried with flashing comprehension. “Oh, how could you! You—” He nodded curtly. “Yes,” he said. “I am that haphazard harlequin, John Valiant, himself.” [Pg 173] CHAPTER XX ON THE EDGE OF THE WORLD There was a pause not to be reckoned by minutes but suffocatingly long. She had grown as pale as he. “That was ungenerous of you,” she said then with icy slowness. “Though no doubt you—found it entertaining. It must have still further amused you to be taken for an architect?” “I am flattered,” he replied, with a trace of bitterness, “to have suggested, even for a moment, so worthy a calling.” Though he spoke calmly enough, his thoughts were in ragged confusion. As her gaze dived into his, he was conscious of outr fancies. She seemed to him like some snow-cloud in woman’s shape, edged with anger and swept by a wrathful wind into this summery afternoon. For her part she was telling herself with passionate resentment that he had no right so to misrepresent himself—to lead her on to such a d nouement. At his answer she put out her hand with a sudden gesture, as if bluntly thrusting the matter from her concern, and turning, went back along the tree-shadowed path. [Pg 174] He followed glumly, gnawing his lip, wanting to say he knew not what, but wretchedly tongue-tied, noting that the great white moth was still waving its creamy wings on the dead stump and wondering if she would take the cape jessamines. He felt an embarrassed relief when, passing the roots where they lay, she stooped to raise them. Then all at once the blood seemed to shrink from his heart. With a hoarse cry he leaped toward her, seized her wrist and roughly dragged her back, feeling as he did so, a sharp fiery sting on his instep. The next moment, with clenched teeth, he was viciously stamping his heel again and again, driving into the soft earth a twisting root-like something that slapped the brown wintered leaves into a hissing turmoil. He had flung her from him with such violence that she had fallen sidewise. Now she raised herself, kneeling in the feathery light, both hands clasped close to her breast, trembling excessively with loathing and feeling the dun earth-floor billow like a canvas sea in a theater. Little puffs of dust from the protesting ground were wreathing about her set face, and she pressed one hand against her shoulder to repress her shivers. “The horrible—horrible—thing!” she said whisperingly. “It would have bitten me!”