"I never asked you to marry me," he repeated very stiffly.

The crash of all her worlds sounded in Maria Angelina's ears. An aghast bewilderment flooded her soul.

Pitiably she stammered, "Why it—it was understood, was it not? You cared—you—you——"

She could not put into words the memories that beset her stricken consciousness. But the cheeks that had felt his kiss flamed with a sudden burning scarlet.

"What was understood?" said Johnny Byrd. "That I was going to marry you—because I kissed you?" And with that dreadful hostile grimness he insisted, "You knew darned well I wasn't proposing to you."What did he mean? Had not every action of his been an affirmation of their relation? Did he believe she was one to whom men acted lightly? Had he never meant to propose to her, never meant to marry?

Last night at the dance—this afternoon in the woods—what had he meant by all his admiration and his boldness?

And that evening on the mountain, when, with his arm around her, he had murmured that he would take care of her. ... Had he meant nothing by it, nothing, except the casual insolent intimacy which a man would grant a ballerina?

Or was he now turning from her in dreadful abandonment because after this scandal she would be too conspicuous to make it agreeable to carry out the intentions—perhaps only the vaguely realized intentions—of the past?

But why then, why had he kissed her on the mountain?

Utter terror beset her. Her voice shook so that the words dropped almost incoherently from the quivering lips.

"But if not—if not—Oh, you must know that now—now it is imperative!"

Shameful beseeching—shameful that she should have to beseech. Where was his manhood, his chivalry—where his compassion?

"Imperative nuts! You don't mean to say you're trying to make me marry you because we got lost in the woods?"

Desperately the girl struggled for dignity.

"It is the least you could do, Signor. Even if—if you had not cared——"

Her voice broke again.

"You little nut." Johnny's tones had altered. More mildly he went on, "I don't quite get you, Ri-Ri, and I don't think you get me. It isn't up to me to do any marrying, if that's honestly what's worrying you. And I'm not going to be stampeded, if that's what you're trying to do. ... Our reputations will have to stand it."

And this, Maria Angelina despairingly recalled, was the man who had kissed her, had watched the moon rise with his arm about her, promising her his protection. ... Wildly she wished that she had died before she had come to this—a thing lightly regarded and repudiated.

It was horrible to plead to him but the panic of her plight drove her on.

"Reputations!" she said chokingly. "Yours can stand it, perhaps—but what of me? You cannot be serious, you cannot! Why, it is my name, my life, my everything! ... You made me come this way. Always I wanted you to go another way, but no, you were sure, you told me to trust to you. And then you pretended to care for me—do you think I would have tolerated your arm about me for one instant if I had not believed it was forever? Oh, if my father were here you would talk differently! Have you no honor? None? ... Every one knew there was an—an affair of the heart growing between us, and then for us two to disappear—this night alone——"Her voice kept breaking off. She could not control it or the tears that ran down her face in the darkness. She was a choking, crying wild thing.

Desperately she forced one last insistence, "Oh, you must, you must!"

"Must nothing," Byrd answered her savagely. "What kind of scheme is this, anyhow? I've had a few things tried before but this beats the Dutch. I don't know how much of this talk you mean but I'll tell you right now, young lady, nobody can tie me up for life with any such stuff. Father! Honor! Scandal! Believe me, little one, you've got the wrong number."

"You mean—you dare refuse?"

"You bet I dare refuse. There's no sense to all this. Nobody's going to think the worse of you because you got lost with me—and if you're trying to put anything over, you might as well stop now."

Maria Angelina stopped. It seemed to her that she should die of shame.Dazedly she stood and looked at him through the darkness out of which a few drops of rain were again falling.

"You just forget it and get a bit of rest," Johnny Byrd advised brusquely. "Hurry in out of the wet. That thing's going to leak again," and he nodded jerkily up at the sky.

He tugged open the door, and stricken as a wounded creature crawling to shelter Maria Angelina bent her head and stumbled across the threshold.

"In you go," he said with a more cheerful air. "Wrap yourself up as warm as you can and I'll follow——"

She was within the doorway when these words came. She turned and saw that he was stooping to enter.

"I shall do quite well, Signor," she found her voice quickly to say. "You need not come in."

"Need not——?" He appeared caught with fresh amazement. "Judas, where do you think I'm going to stay? Out in the rain?""Certainly not in here, Signor."

Desperation lent Maria Angelina sudden fire. "You must be mad, Signor!" she told him fiercely.

"And you madder. You don't think I'm going to stay"—he jerked his head backward—"out in the wet?"

"But naturally. You are a man. It is your place."

"My place—you little Wop! A man! I'd be a dead one." The words of a humorous lecturer smote his memory and with harsh merriment he quoted, "'Good-night, Miss Middleton, said I, as I buttoned her carefully into her tent and went out to sleep upon a cactus.' ... None of that stuff for mine," and without more ado Johnny Byrd lowered his head to pass under the doorway.

There was a gasp from the interior.

"Ri-Ri, listen to me!" he demanded upon the threshold. "You're raving—loco—nuts! There's no harm in my huddling under the same roof with you—it's a damn necessity. I'm not going to hold hands and I'm not going to kiss you. If you've got any drawn swords you can lay their blades between us. You turn your face to the wall and forget all about it and I'll do the same."

"Signor, stay without!"

"Got a dagger in your garter? ... Ri-Ri, listen to me. You're absolutely wrong in the head. Be sensible. Have a heart. I'm going to get some rest."

"It does not matter what you say or what you intend. You do not need to reassure me that you will not kiss me, Signor. That will not happen again." Maria Angelina's voice was like ice. "But you are not coming within this place."

Tensely she confronted him. He loomed before her as a wolfish brute, seeking his comfort at this last cost of her pride. ... But no man, she thought tragically, should ever say that he had spent the night within the same four walls.

She sprang forward, her hands outstretched, then shrank back.She could not touch him. Not only the perception of the ludicrous folly of matching her strength against his withheld her, but some flaming fury against putting a hand upon a man who had so repudiated her.

Her brain grew alert. Suddenly very intent and collected she stepped aside and Johnny Byrd came in.

Close to the wall she pressed, edging nearer and nearer the door, and as he stumbled and fumbled with the blankets she gave a quick spring and flashed out.

Like mad she ran across the clearing, through a thicket, and out again and away.

On the instant he was after her; she heard his steps crashing behind her but she had the start of her swiftness and the speed of her desperation. Brambles meant nothing to her, nor the thickets nor branches. She flew on and on, lost in the darkness, his shouts growing fainter and fainter in her ears.

At last, in a shrub, she stopped to listen. She could hear nothing. Then came a call—very faint. It came from the wrong direction. She had turned and doubled like a hare and Johnny was pursuing, if he still pursued, a mistaken way.

She was safe ... and she stood still for a few minutes to quiet her pounding heart and catch her gasping breath, and then she stole out, cautiously, anxiously hurrying, to make her own way down.

She had no idea of time or of distance. Vaguely she felt that it was the middle of the night but that if she were quick, very quick, she might reach the Lodge before it was too disastrously late. She might meet a searching party out for them—there would be searching parties if people were truly worried at their absence.

Of course if they thought it an elopement, they might not take that trouble. They might be merely waiting and conjecturing.

If only Cousin Jim had not returned to New York! He was so kind and concerned that he would be searching. There would be a chance of his understanding. But Cousin Jane—what would she believe?

Cousin Jane had seen Johnny draw her significantly back.

At her folly of the afternoon she looked back with horror. How bold she had been in that new American freedom! Mamma had warned her—dear Mamma so far away, so innocent of this terrible disgrace. ...

Wildly she plunged on through the dark, hoping always for a path but finding nothing but rough wilderness. She knew no landmarks to guide her, but down she went determinedly, down, down continually.

An hour had passed. Perhaps two hours. The sky had grown blacker and blacker. There were occasional gusts of rain. The wind that had been threshing the tree tops blew with increasing fury.

Jagged tridents of lightning flashed before her eyes. Thunder followed almost instantly, great crashing peals that seemed to be rending the heavens.Maria Angelina felt as if the splinters must fall upon her. It was like the voice of judgment.

On she went, down, down, through a darkness that was chaos lit by lightning. Rain came, in a torrent of water, heavy as lead, drenching her to the skin. Her hair had streamed loose and was plastered about her face, her throat, her arms. A strand like a wet rope wound about her wrist and delayed her. Often she slipped and fell.

Still down. But if she should find the Lodge, what then? What would they think of her, wet, torn, disheveled, an outcast of the night?

She sobbed aloud as she went. She, who had come to America so proudly, so confidently of glad fortune, who had thought the world a fairy tale and believed that she had found its prince—what place on earth would there be for her after this, disgraced and ashamed?

They would ship her back to Mamma at once. And the scandal would travel with her, whispered by tourists, blazoned by newspapers.

And her family had so counted upon her! They had looked for such great things!

Now she had utterly blackened their name, tarnished them all forever with her disrepute. Poor Julietta's hopes would be ruined. ... No one would want a Santonini. ... Lucia would be furious. The Tostis might even repudiate her—certainly they would inflict their condescension.

She could only disappear, hide in some nursing sisterhood.

So ran her wild thoughts as she scrambled down these endless mountain sides. All the black fears that she had fought off earlier in the evening by her belief in Johnny's devotion were upon her now like a pack of wolves. She wished that she could die at once and be out of it, yet when she heard the sudden wash of water, almost under her feet, she jumped aside and screamed.

A river! In the night it looked wider than that one they had followed that afternoon but it might only be another part of it.

Very wearily she made her way along the bank, so mortally tired that it seemed as if every step must be her last. There was no underbrush to struggle with now, for she had come to a grove of pines and their fallen needles made a carpet for her lagging feet.

The rain was nearly over, but she was too wet and too cold to take comfort in that.

More and more laggingly she went and at last, when a hidden root tripped her, she made no effort to rise, but lay prostrate, her cheek upon her outflung arm, and yielded to the dark, drowsy oblivion that stole numbingly over her.

She would be glad, she thought, never to wake.