Page:Harold Titus--Timber.djvu/161

Rh honest with me as I have been with you. If I had come to Windigo yesterday, if I had told you that I could never bring fortune, if I had asked you to keep your promise under those circumstances, would you have taken me?"

She did not answer. She tried to tear her eyes away from his, tried to move, but she was helpless in the grip of his earnestness. A door opened and Helen Foraker stepped into the room, saw them and halted in surprise.

"Please excuse me," she begged. "I heard no one and thought you had gone out."

She started to withdraw, but Marcia checked her.

"Don't go," she said and laughed. She began drawing on a glove, covering the white, well shaped, well tended hands. "There isn't place for two of us here, it seems. I'm going—to make room for you, Miss Foraker."

She drew back and her eyes ran the length of Taylor's body, resting on his face with a blaze of fury. Her lip curled over her even teeth as she said: "This, I suppose, may be the ending of the first lesson!"

She turned toward the door.

"Wait!" he said sharply, and caught her wrist, swinging her about to face him.

"You haven't answered me—under those conditions, what would you have said?"

As she shook off his clasp she smiled again and her chin went up. "What would I have said?" She laughed, with the laugh of a victor. "Why, you poor fool, I'd have laughed in your face!"

The screen door banged behind her. As she jumped to the seat of the roadster he stood looking after her, arms limp at his side, breath quick. The motor started, the car backed and swung and with a bellow as of