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“Yes, I blew it,” he corroborated absently.

“It would have burned longer.”

“Perhaps–I don’t know.”

Arnold moved back a step and the old smile, mocking, maddening, spread over his face; tilting, perpendicular, the tips of the big moustaches.

“After all–” very slowly–“after all, then, you’re a coward.”

The tall man stood up; six-feet-two, long, bony, immovable: Ichabod himself again.

“You know that’s a lie.”

“You’ll meet me again,–another way, then?”

“No, never!”

“I repeat, you’re a cursed coward.”

“I’d be a coward if I did meet you,” quickly.

Something in Ichabod’s voice caught the little man’s ear and held him silent, as, for a long half-minute, the last time in their lives, the two men looked into each other’s eyes.

“You’ll perhaps explain.” Arnold’s voice was cold as death. “You have a reason?”

Ichabod walked slowly over to the window and leaned against the frame. Standing there, the spring sunshine fell full upon his face, drawing clear the furrows at the angles of his eyes and the gray threads of his hair. He paused a moment, looking out over the broad prairie shimmering indistinctly in the heat, and the calm of it all took hold of him, shone in his face.

“I’ve a reason,” very measuredly, “but it’s not that I fear death, or you.” He took up his hat and smoothed it absently. “In future I shall neither seek, nor avoid you. Do what you wish–and God judge us both.” Without a glance at the other man, he turned toward the door.

Arnold moved a step, as if to prevent him going.

“I repeat, it’s my right to know why you refuse.” His feet shifted uneasily upon the floor. “Is it because of another–Eleanor?”

Ichabod paused.

“Yes,” very slowly. “It’s because of Eleanor–and another.”

The tall man’s hand was upon the knob, but this time there was no interruption. An instant he hesitated; then absently, slowly, the door opened and closed. A moment later indistinct, descending steps sounded on the stairway.

Alone, Asa Arnold stood immovable, looking blindly at the closed door, listening until the tapping feet had passed into silence. Then, in a motion indescribable, of pain and of abandon, he sank back into the single chair.

His dearest enemy would have pitied the little man at that moment!

CHAPTER VII–THE PRICE OF THE LEAP

In the chronology of the little town, day followed day, as monotonously as ticks the tall clock on the wall. Only in multiple they merged into the seasons which glided so smoothly, one into the other, that the change was unnoticed, until it had taken place.

Thus three months passed by, and man’s work for the year was nearly done. The face of the prairie had become one of many colors; eternal badge of civilization as opposed to Nature, who paints each season with its own hue. Beside the roadways great, rank sunflowers turned their glaring yellow faces to the light. In every direction stretched broad fields of flax; unequally ripening, their color scheme ranging from sky blue of blossoms to warm browns of maturity. Blotches of sod corn added here and there a dash of green to the picture. Surrounding all, a setting for all, the unbroken virgin prairie, mottled green and brown, stretched, smiling, harmonious, beneficent; a land of promise and of plenty for generations yet unborn.

All through the long, hot summer Asa Arnold had stayed in town, smoking a big pipe in front of the hotel of Hans Becher. Indolent, abnormally indolent, a stranger seeing him thus would have commented; but, save Hans the confiding, none other of the many interested observers were deceived. No man merely indolent sleeps neither by night nor by day; and it seemed the little man never slept. No man merely indolent sits wide-eyed hour after hour, gazing blankly at the earth beneath his feet–and uttering never a word. Brooding, not dreaming, was Asa Arnold; brooding over the eternal problem of right and wrong. And, as passed the slow weeks, he moved back–back on the trail of civilization, back until Passion and not Reason was the god enthroned; back until one thought alone was with him morning, noon, and night,–and that thought preponderant, overmastering, deadly hate.