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Weary flushed embarrassment; this was no joke. “No,” he stammered, in some doubt just how to proceed. “The fact is, you’ve made a little mistake. I’m not–“

“Oh, you needn’t go on,” she interrupted, and her voice, had Weary known it better, heralded the pouring out of a woman’s heart. “I know I’ve made a mistake, all right; you don’t need to tell me that. And I suppose you want to tell me that you’ve got over–things; that you don’t care, any more. Maybe you don’t, but it’ll take a lot to make me believe it. Because you did care, Ira. You cared, all right enough!” She laughed in the way that makes one very uncomfortable.

“And maybe you’ll tell me that I didn’t. But I did, and I do yet. I ain’t ashamed to say it, if I did marry Spikes Weber just to spite you. That’s all it was, and you’d have found it out if you hadn’t gone off the way you did. I hate Spikes Weber; and he knows it, Ira. He knows I–care–for you, and he’s making my life a hell. Oh, maybe I deserve it–but you won’t– Now you’ve come back, you can have it out with him; and I–I almost hope you’ll kill him! I do, and I don’t care if it is wicked. I–I don’t care for anything much, but–you.” She had big, soft brown eyes, and a sweet, weak mouth, and she stopped and looked at Weary in a way that he could easily imagine would be irresistible–to a man who cared.

Weary felt that he was quite helpless. She had hurried out sentences that sealed his lips. He could not tell her now that she had made a mistake; that he was not Ira Mallory, but a perfect stranger. The only thing to do now was to carry the thing through as tactfully as possible, and get away as soon as he could. Playing he was Irish, he found, was not without its disadvantages.

“What particular brand of hell has he been making for you?” he asked her sympathetically.

“I wouldn’t think, knowing Spikes as you do, you’d need to ask,” she said impatiently. “The same old brand, I guess. He gets drunk, and then–I told him, right out, just after we were married, that I liked you the best, and he don’t forget it; and he don’t let me. He swears he’ll shoot you on sight–as if that would do any good! He hates you, Ira.” She laughed again unpleasantly.

Weary, sitting uneasily in the saddle looking at her, wondered if Irish really cared; or if, in Weary’s place, he would have sat there so calmly and just looked at her. She was rather pretty, in a pink and white, weak way. He could easily imagine her marrying Spikes Weber for mere spite; what he could not imagine, was Irish in love with her.

It seemed almost as if she caught a glimmer of his thoughts, for she reined closer, and her teeth were digging into her lower lip. “Well, aren’t you going to do anything?” she demanded desperately. “You’re here, and I’ve told you I–care. Are you going to leave me to bear Spikes’ abuse always?”

“You married him,” Weary remarked mildly and a bit defensively. It seemed to him that loyalty to Irish impelled him.

She tossed her head contemptuously. “It’s nice to throw that at me. I might get back at you and say you loved me. You did, you know.”

“And you married Spikes; what can I do about it?”

“What–can–you–do–about it? Did you come back to ask me that?” There was a well defined, white line around her mouth, and her eyes were growing ominously bright.

Weary did not like the look of her, nor her tone. He felt, somehow, glad that it was not Irish, but himself; Irish might have felt the thrall of old times–whatever they were–and have been tempted. His eyes, also, grew ominous, but his voice was very smooth. (Irish, too, had that trait of being quietest when he was most roused.)