He was silent, and of a sudden the place became very still; still as the dead past the man had suggested. Wide-eyed, motionless, the girl sat looking up at him. She did not speak; she scarcely seemed to breathe. As she had chosen, so had it come to pass; yet involuntarily she delayed. Deliverance from the haunting solitude that had oppressed her like an evil dream was beckoning; yet impotent, she held back. Of a sudden, within her being, something she had fancied dormant had awakened. The instinct of convention, fundamental, inbred, more vital to a woman than life itself, intruded preventingly, fair in her path. Warning, pleading, distinct as a spoken admonition, its voice sounded a negative in her ears. She tried to silence it, tried to overwhelm it with her newborn philosophy; but it was useless. Fear of the future, as she had said, she had none. Good or bad as the man might be, she had chosen. With full knowledge of his deficiencies she had chosen. But to go away with him so, without sanction of law or of clergy; she, Bess Landor, who was a wife--. The hands on her shoulders tightened insistently, the compelling face drew nearer. "Answer me, Bess," demanded a tense voice; "don't keep me in suspense. Will you go?" With the motion of a captured wild thing, the girl arose, drew back until she was free. "Don't," she pleaded. "Don't hurry me so. Give me a little time to think." She caught her breath from the effort. "I'll go with you, yes; but to-day, now--I can't. We must see How first. He must know, must consent--" "See How!" The man checked himself. "You must be mad," he digressed. "I can't see How, nor won't. I tell you it's between How and myself you must choose. I love you, Bess. I'm proving I love you; but I'm not insane absolutely. I ask you again: will you come?" The girl shook her head, nervously, jerkily. "I can't now, as things are." "And why not?" passionately. "Haven't you said you care for me?" For answer the red lower lip trembled. That was all. The man came a step forward, and another. "Tell me, Bess," he demanded. "Don't you love me?" "I have told you," said a low voice. Answering, coercing, swift as the swoop of a prairie hawk, as a human being in abandon, the man's arms were about her. Ere the girl could move or resist, his lips were upon her lips. "You must go then," he commanded. "I'll compel you to go." He kissed her again, hungrily, irresistibly. "I won't take no for an answer. You will go." "Don't, please," pleaded a voice, breathless from its owner's impotent effort to be free. "You must not, we must not--yet. I'm bad, I know, but not wholly. Please let me go." Unconscious of time, unconscious of place, oblivious to aught save the moment, the man held his ground, joying in his victory, in her effort to escape. Save that one casual glance long before, he had not looked out of doors. Had he done so, had he seen--.