Page:Lippincotts Monthly Magazine-70.djvu/610

602 said shortly. "I do this, as I have done all the rest, because you were once my husband, and because I still bear your name, but now I have done my duty, and this is the end of it." She extended the money rigidly.

He tossed it contemptuously over the rock. The beautiful virgin sky had suddenly grown dark. With a fierce pang, he felt a wild rush of longing for the solitude of his prison cell. At this moment his wife seemed less a woman to him than a disturbing element in his long-cherished plans. He flushed darkly. To wait three years—for this! He crossed over and laid one arm on her bowed shoulders.

"Molly," he said huskily, "Molly, you don't know what you're saying—you don't know what you're doing. There hasn't been an hour in the day or night that I haven't been planning for you and Margie. My God! You knew I was innocent—you knew I didn't take the money. What if all the others believed me guilty! You knew,—you didn't doubt me!" He stooped entreatingly. His eyes besought her.

"Come, Moll," he said gently, "let us go home."

She looked at the blue vault above, where the stars were banning to tremble. The croak of the crickets came shrilly to her ears.

"I can't," she said sombrely,—"I can't. Every stitch that I put into that hateful coarse sewing seemed to take me farther away from you. Oh!" she suddenly cried out, "let me go! Let me go!" She twisted her hands convulsively. "You don't know—you can't understand! When I saw you coming through that prison gate my every instinct repudiated you. 'Jim's dead,' something said to me. This man in the prison rags is nothing to you. He can't be—now. Don't you see?" she wailed heart-brokenly. "It's repulsion—repulsion for you!"

The man was trembling like a wounded animal. Long bars of rose-colored light were filtering across the landscape, and they seemed like separate shafts of fire aimed directly at him. The sound of her low sobbing hardly reached his dulled ears. With a miserable gesture he raised his torn hat as he stumbled blindly away.

Barton, approaching from the opposite direction, stared in blank bewilderment at the retreating figure.

"Good heavens!" he ejaculated. "Where's he going?"

"He's going out of my existence," replied Molly simply.

Barton whirled round on her. " What do you mean?" he abruptly inquired.

Molly stood at bay. She knew Barton well enough to divine how her attitude would affect him, and she hesitated to reveal it. Already, in her mind, little clouds of doubt were forming. In these three years Barton had been her friend and stay, the sustaining, helpful figure in