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“Sit down, Brother Wayne. If you’re going to convert me, it may take some time, you know, and you might as well make yourself comfortable. As for me, I’ll take the anxious bench.” She laughed with a certain girlishness, which he well remembered, and leaped to a sitting posture on the table with her hands on her knees, swinging her smart shoes backwards and forwards below it.

Madison looked at her in hopeless silence, with a pale, disturbed face and shining eyes.

“Or, if you want to talk as we used to talk, Mad, when we sat on the front steps at Angel’s and pa and ma went inside to give us a show, ye can hop up alongside o’ me.” She made a feint of gathering her skirts beside her.

“Safie!” broke out the unfortunate man, in a tone that seemed to increase in formal solemnity with his manifest agitation, “this is impossible. The laws of God that have joined you and this man”–

“Oh, it’s the prayer-meeting, is it?” said Safie, settling her skirts again, with affected resignation. “Go on.”

“Listen, Safie,” said Madison, turning despairingly towards her. “Let us for His sake, let us for the sake of our dear blessed past, talk together earnestly and prayerfully. Let us take this time to root out of our feeble hearts all yearnings that are not prompted by Him–yearnings that your union with this man makes impossible and sinful. Let us for the sake of the past take counsel of each other, even as brother and sister.”

“Sister McGee!” she interrupted mockingly. “It wasn’t as brother and sister you made love to me at Angel’s.”

“No! I loved you then, and would have made you my wife.”

“And you don’t love me any more,” she said, audaciously darting a wicked look into his eyes, “only because I didn’t marry you? And you think that Christian?”

“You know I love you as I have loved you always,” he said passionately.

“Hush!” she said mockingly; “suppose he should hear you.”

“He knows it!” said Madison bitterly. “I told him all!”

She stared at him fixedly.

“You have–told–him–that–you STILL love me?” she repeated slowly.

“Yes, or I wouldn’t be here now. It was due to him–to my own conscience.”

“And what did he say?”

“He insisted upon my coming, and, as God is my Judge and witness–he seemed satisfied and content.”

She drew her pretty lips together with a long whistle, and then leaped from the table. Her face was hard and her eyes were bright as she went to the window and looked out. He followed her timidly.

“Don’t touch me,” she said, sharply striking away his proffered hand. He turned with a flushed cheek and walked slowly towards the door. Her laugh stopped him.

“Come! I reckon that squeezin’ hands ain’t no part of your contract with Sandy?” she said, glancing down at her own. “Well, so you’re goin’?”

“I only wished to talk seriously and prayerfully with you for a few moments, Safie, and then–to see you no more.”

“And how would that suit him,” she said dryly, “if he wants your company here? Then, just because you can’t convert me and bring me to your ways of thinkin’ in one visit, I suppose you think it is Christian-like to run away like this! Or do you suppose that, if you turn tail now, he won’t believe that your Christian strength and Christian resignation is all humbug?”

Madison dropped into the chair, put his elbows on the table, and buried his face in his hands. She came a little nearer, and laid her hand lightly on his arm. He made a movement as if to take it, but she withdrew it impatiently.

“Come,” she said brusquely; “now you’re in for it you must play the game out. He trusts you; if he sees you can’t trust yourself, he’ll shoot you on sight. That don’t frighten you? Well, perhaps this will then! He’ll SAY your religion is a sham and you a hypocrite–and everybody will believe him. How do you like that, Brother Wayne? How will that help the Church? Come! You’re a pair of cranks together; but he’s got the whip-hand of you this time. All you can do is to keep up to his idea of you. Put a bold face on it, and come here as often as you can–the oftener the better; the sooner you’ll both get sick of each other–and of ME. That’s what you’re both after, ain’t it? Well! I can tell you now, you needn’t either of you be the least afraid of me.”