Page:Temple Bailey--The Gay cockade.djvu/263

 For it had been decided that O-liver was to run against Tillotson in the next election, and beat him if he could.

O-liver had told Jane about his marriage on the night before Tommy came to her. He had asked her to ride with him. "If you'll go this afternoon at four you shall have Mary Pick, and I'll take Tommy's horse."

They had carried their lunch with them and had eaten it at sunset in a lovely spot where the cañon opened out to show a shining yellow stretch of sea, with the hills like black serpents running into it.

Yet it was dark, with the stars above them and the sea a faint gray below, before O-liver said to her what he had brought her there to say.

He told her of his father and mother. Of Fluffy Hair.

"I waked up at last to the fact that I was letting two women support me. So I came here and began to work at fifteen dollars a week. And for the first time in my life I respected myself—and was content. And then I met you and saw things ahead. You made me see them."

He turned toward her in the dark. "Jane, I'm finding that I love you—mightily." He tried to speak lightly. "And I'm not free. And because I love you I've got to keep away. But I want you to 257