CHAPTER XXIV

|INTO the wood, a wild, unbrageous tract of land lying back of the cottage, he strode, full of ponderous fears as to the outcome of his undertaking, and yet vaguely buoyed up by the natural beauty on all sides. Soon the town lay behind him; only the low hum of its traffic, the occasional clanging of a locomotive's bell, the whistle of an engine at a factory, the clatter of a dray followed him. The reverent, almost peaceful thought was borne in upon him that the meandering, little-used path he was pursuing had been traversed many times by Dora. In that secluded and picturesque spot she had breathed in the inspiration which had lifted her far above those by whom she had been misunderstood and traduced. Along that path she and his child, perchance, had plucked flowers through the years in which he had shunned them--denied them before the world, whose good opinion he had coveted to his moral undoing.

Half a mile from the cottage the path began to descend to the river valley, a vast swampy tangle of dense undergrowth. Here in the marshes, impassable during the overflow of winter and spring, but now dank, cool, and seductive, were many nooks of indescribable beauty. Here moss-grown willows bowed over seeping, crystal pools and silently trickling water. There were the armies of cattails, the solitary clumps of broom-sedge, the banks of delicate ferns, and the pond-lilies which had formed the background of her pictures. There she had found the wild rose-bushes, the papaw, the sumac, and the mazes of grape and muscadine vines into the reproduction of which she had poured her crushed and yet awakening soul.

Presently he came upon her seated on a mossy bank, her closed sketch-book on her knee. She was not working, but, with the end of her pencil at her parted lips, she sat watching Lionel, whom he could see plucking flowers and colored leaves not far away.

“Now, don't go any farther, darling boy!” he heard her call out, in tones the mellow sweetness of which shot through him like a delectable pain. “You might wander away, and then mother's boy would be lost.”

Sheltered from her view by hanging vines and the lowering branches of a beech-tree, Galt peered out at her. How could he have been so blinded?--so densely unappreciative of her? Where in all his experience had he known a creature so beautiful in soul, mind, and body? And yet he had thrown her down and trampled on her and left her covered with the mire and slime of his own making. He smothered a groan of blended self-contempt and despair. Her mother had doubted his ever regaining her regard, and Mrs. Barry knew her best. The girl had been at his mercy once, and he had not hesitated to strike; now she had the upper hand. What would she do? How would she receive his proposal?--what would she say? Would her soulful eyes blaze under the fires of just retaliation? Would her magnetic voice ring with the contempt she must so long have felt?

Noiselessly treading the dank, green moss which lay between him and her, he was close to her before she was aware of his presence. Then she glanced up and saw him; there was a fluttering, shrinking look in her long-lashed eyes, in which he read the hurried hope that the meeting was purely accidental; to his horror, he also read in the simple act of reaching for her hat, which lay by her side, that she intended to avoid any sort of intercourse with him.

With the agony of this fear sounding in his voice, he cried, imploringly: “Please don't run away! I have been to your house to see you; your mother told me you were here.”

“But she _wouldn't_,” Dora said, pale and surprised. “She knows that I don't want to--to meet _any one_ here. It isn't fair, Kenneth--you know it isn't! It is taking a mean, low advantage of me, after all that has happened. It is cowardly, and I won't stand it. You will leave me instantly, or _I_ shall go!”

“God forgive me, you are right, Dora!” he cried, in dismay. “But there is something I must say, and even your mother thought I might venture to see you.”

“If it is to offer me money for my boy, as you did in the contemptible