There was a rumble of thunder far out on the western prairie. A cold

breath stole through the hot stillness, and an arm of vapor reached out

between the moon and the quiet earth. Darkness fell. The man and the girl

kept silence between them. They might have been two sad guardians of the

black little stream that splashed unseen at their feet. Now and then an

echo of far away lightning faintly illumined them with a green light.

Thunder rolled nearer, ominously; the gods were driving their chariots

over the bridge. The chill breath passed, leaving the air again to its hot

inertia.

"I did not want to go," she said, at last, with tears just below the

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surface of her voice. "I wanted to stay here, but he--they wouldn't--I

can't."

"Wanted to stay here?" he said, huskily, not turning. "Here?"

"Yes."

"In Rouen, you mean?"

"In Plattville."

"In Plattville?" He turned now, astounded.

"Yes; wouldn't you have taken me on the 'Herald'?" She rose and came

toward him. "I could have supported myself here if you would--and I've

studied how newspapers are made; I know I could have earned a wage. We

could have made it a daily." He searched in vain for a trace of raillery

in her voice; there was none; she seemed to intend her words to be taken

literally.

"I don't understand," he said. "I don't know what you mean."

"I mean that I want to stay here; that I ought to stay here; that my

conscience tells me I should--but I can't and it makes me very unhappy.

That was why I acted so badly."

"Your conscience!" he cried.

"Oh, I know what a jumble and puzzle it must seem to you."

"I only know one thing; that you are going away to-morrow morning, and

that I shall never see you again."

The darkness had grown heavy. They could not see each other; but a wan

glimmer gave him a fleeting, misty view of her; she stood half-turned away

from him, her hand to her cheek in the uncertain fashion of his great

moment of the afternoon; her eyes-he saw in the flying picture that he

caught--were adorably troubled and her hand trembled. She had been

irresistible in her gaiety; but now that a mysterious distress assailed

her, the reason for which he had no guess, she was so divinely pathetic;

and seemed such a rich and lovely and sad and happy thing to have come

into his life only to go out of it; and he was so full of the prophetic

sense of loss of her--it seemed so much like losing everything--that he

found too much to say to be able to say anything.

He tried to speak, and choked a little. A big drop of rain fell on his

bare head. Neither of them noticed the weather or cared for it. They stood

with the renewed blackness hanging like a thick drapery between them.




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