Phebe was much occupied with her father, perhaps purposely so, until his
bed-time. She made him her innocent refuge. Ludovic kept subtly away,
lest the friendly old gentleman should be led into conversation, which
might delay the hour of his retiring. He went cheerfully to rest about
the time the lamps were lighted, and Phebe sought once more her corner
in the empty section, shaded by her father's curtains.
Ludovic, dropping his voice below the roar of the train, asked if he
might take the seat beside her.
He took it, and turned his back upon the car. He looked at his watch. He
had just three hours before Pocatello. The train was making great speed;
they would get in, the conductor said, by eleven o'clock. But he need
not tell her yet. Half an hour passed, and his thoughts in the silence
were no longer to be borne.
She was aware of his intense excitement, his restlessness, the nervous
action of his hands. She shrank from the burning misery in his
questioning eyes. Once she heard him whisper under his breath; but the
words she heard were, "_My love! my love!_" and she thought she could
not have heard aright. Her trouble increased with her sense of some
involuntary strangeness in her companion, some recklessness impending
which she might not know how to meet. She rose in her place, and said
tremulously that she must go.
"Go!" He sprang up. "Go where, in Heaven's name? Stay," he implored,
"and be kind to me! We get off at Pocatello."
"We?" she asked with her eyes in his.
"That man and I. I am his prisoner."
She sank down again, and stared at him mutely.
"He is the sheriff of Bingham County, and I am his prisoner," he
repeated. "Do the words mean nothing to you?" He paused for some sign
that she understood him. She dropped her eyes; her face had become as
white as a snowdrop.
"He is taking me to Pocatello for the preliminary examination--oh, must
I tell you this? If I thought you would never read it in the ghastly
type"--
"Go on," she whispered.
"Examination," he choked, "for--for homicide. I don't know what the
judge will call it; but the other man is dead, and I am left to answer
for the passion of a moment with my life. And you will not speak to me?"
But now she did speak. Leaning forward so that she could look him in the
eyes, she said:--
"I thought when I saw that man always with you, watching you, that he
might be taking you, with your consent, to one of those places where
they treat persons for--for unsoundness of the mind. I knew you had some
trouble that was beyond help. I could think of nothing worse than that.
It haunted me till we began to speak together; then I knew it could not
be; now I wish it had been."
"I do not," said Ludovic. "I thank God I am not mad. There is passion in
my blood, and folly, perhaps, but not insanity. No; I am responsible."