nervous fingers was beginning to tear strips of loose bark from the
nearest trunk.
"Well, what do you thay?"
"I don't want any money, and I shall stay here." She hesitated, looked
around her, and then added, with an effort, "I suppose you meant well.
Be it so! Let by-gones be by-gones. You said just now, 'It's the same
old Teresa.' So she is, and seeing she's the same she's better here than
anywhere else."
There was enough bitterness in her tone to call for Curson's
half-perfunctory sympathy.
"That be d--d," he responded quickly. "Jutht thay you'll come, Tita,
and--"
She stopped his half-spoken sentence with a negative gesture. "You don't
understand. I shall stay here."
"But even if they don't theek you here, you can't live here forever. The
friend that you wrote about who wath tho good to you, you know, can't
keep you here alwayth; and are you thure you can alwayth trutht her?"
"It isn't a woman; it's a man." She stopped short, and colored to the
line of her forehead. "Who said it was a woman?" she continued fiercely,
as if to cover her confusion with a burst of gratuitous anger. "Is that
another of your lies?"
Curson's lips, which for a moment had completely lost their smile, were
now drawn together in a prolonged whistle. He gazed curiously at her
gown, at her hat, at the bow of bright ribbon that tied her black hair,
and said, "Ah!"
"A poor man who has kept my secret," she went on hurriedly--"a man as
friendless and lonely as myself. Yes," disregarding Curson's cynical
smile, "a man who has shared everything--"
"Naturally," suggested Curson.
"And turned himself out of his only shelter to give me a roof and
covering," she continued mechanically, struggling with the new and
horrible fancy that his words awakened.
"And thlept every night at Indian Thpring to save your reputation," said
Curson. "Of courthe."
Teresa turned very white. Curson was prepared for an outburst of
fury--perhaps even another attack. But the crushed and beaten woman only
gazed at him with frightened and imploring eyes. "For God's sake, Dick,
|