It was hopeless; she did not reply, but stitched in and out on Jack's little frock, sick at heart with the shame of such a quarrel, since it was to accomplish nothing. "Answer me!" he thundered. Elizabeth laid her sewing on the lounge beside her, and rose to her feet. She looked him squarely in the face and answered as he demanded. "I will sign no papers of which I do not approve, and certainly none which I have been deceived about in any way. Aside from that you are free to run the farm as you wish." "Then take the whole damned thing, and I'll go back to mother and make a home for her. She was never allowed to have a home in this house after you came into it," he flung out. "I'll take the Mitchell County land, and you can have what's here. That's what you and Hornby and Hansen planned from the first, I should judge. That's why you got Noland to do it." Thrusting his hat down to his very ears, he strode from the house, swinging the screen door behind him so hard that it broke and the split corner fell out and hung dangling by the net, which kept the splintered frame from falling to the ground. Elizabeth closed the panelled door to keep out the flies, and turned quietly to the bedroom for her bonnet. She spoke to Hepsie, who had heard the entire argument, as she passed through the kitchen, asking her to keep Jack for her, and walked through the barnyard, through the wet pasture, and on to her haunt in the willows, where she could think undisturbed. John was still standing in the harness room of the barn when he heard the door close behind Elizabeth, and saw her coming that way. Elizabeth was coming to the barn! He gave a start of surprise. Even while he had not given up all thought of her coming to his terms, he wondered at her giving in so promptly. John drew back so that she should not see that he was watching her. When she did not immediately appear he thought with a smile of satisfaction that she had stopped, not finding it easy to approach after the haughty manner in which she had just dismissed his demands. He waited a moment, considering terms of capitulation, and then walked unconcernedly out. The truth broke upon him. She had passed the barn, she was on her way to the willows, not to him. Something in John Hunter sickened. Up to the moment when John had seen his wife coming toward him he had been fully prepared to stand by the terms of dissolution which he had made. But in that moment when he watched her recede from him in the direction of the willows, the tide of his feelings turned; he wished he had not issued his ultimatum; he wished he had not put it to the test.