was divided between relief and a sense of guilt, but she came back with an armful of linen and finery and demanded his attention. He tried his best to play up.
"What's that for?"
"It's for the dining room table."
"Better get one first. All I've got's a horse. Might look well on him."
But it was when she began on her personal wardrobe that he realized how firmly the trap had set. She held up little new undergarments of so private a nature that they made him uncomfortable and self-conscious. He passed them off with a joke.
"You mean to say you can get into anything that size?"
"I'm not very big, Tom."
And something in her tone, in the array of fragile feminine garments all around, in the fact that she herself was fragile, feminine and greatly in love with him, touched him profoundly. He put his arms around her.
"I'm not much," he said, "but if we do get married I'll try to be good to you. You know that, don't you?"
It was after eleven when he reached the Martin House, Ed told him that the crowd was in thirty-four and that they were expecting him, but with his hand on the door knob he turned away. If he was going to bury Kay Dowling forever, as now he must, he was going to do it decently, not with liquor.
The hired car dropped him at an outlying ranch, where he had left his horse, and without rousing the family he got the Miller and rode off. He found himself looking forward to the shack as a sort of sanctuary. He was done for, in spite of his acquittal that day. He would marry Clare; that was all he could do. But in the back of his mind he knew that Mrs. Mailory had been right. Clare was all that she had said; and more. She could be shrewish, too. He would find himself with a scolding nagging wife, and there would be no love on his side to help him to tolerance. He knew his own temper; he turned half sick with fear.
It was very dark as he rode along. The Miller picked his steps carefully, finding the track where Tom could see
