Part 62

"It's not that; it's only that I don't want your--pity. I don't think that I want anything you have to give. You have hurt me; you have cut me to the quick and something is happening--has happened--here!" She laid both hands upon her heart. "I feel still and cold and sort of--impersonal inside."

"Oh, Essie!"

"I understand perfectly, Mrs. Terriberry. You like me--you like me very much, but you are one kind of a coward, and of what value is a coward's friendship or regard? I don't mean to be impertinent--I'm just trying to explain how I feel. In your heart you believe in me, but you are afraid--afraid of public opinion--afraid of being left out of the teas and card parties which mean more to you than I do. You've known me all my life and fail me at the first test."

"I hate to hear you talk like that; it doesn't sound like Essie Tisdale." But in her heart she knew the girl was right. She was a coward; she had not the requisite courage to set her face against the crowd, but must needs turn and run with them while every impulse and instinct within her pulled the other way.

"Doesn't it?" The girl smiled bitterly. "Why should it? Can't you see--don't you understand that you've helped kill that Essie Tisdale--that blundering, ignorant Essie Tisdale who liked everybody and believed in everybody as she thought they liked and believed in her?"

"Dear me! oh, dear me!" Mrs. Terriberry rubbed her forehead and groaned pathetically.

Any consecutive line of thought outside the usual channels pulled Mrs. Terriberry down like a spell of sickness. She looked jaded from the present conversation and her thoughts ran together bewilderingly.

"I know to-night how an outlaw feels when the posse's at his heels and he rides with murder in his heart," the girl went on with hardness in her young voice. "I know to-night why he makes them pay dear for his life when he takes his last stand behind a rock."

"Oh, Essie, don't!" Mrs. Terriberry wrung her garnet and moonstone-ringed fingers together in distress. "You mustn't get reckless!"

"What real difference does it make to you or anybody else how I get?" she demanded fiercely, and added: "You are showing me how much when you advertise to all the town by turning me out that you believe their evil tongues."

"I'm goin' to talk to Hank again----" but Essie stopped her with a vehement gesture.

"You needn't. I don't want pity, I tell you, I don't want favors. I am going to-morrow. There is some way out. There is a place in the world for me somewhere and I'll find it."

She turned away and walked toward the corral where the black omnibus horses nickered softly at her coming, while Alphonse and Gaston stood on their hind legs and squealed a vociferous welcome.

"My only friends----" and she smiled bitterly.

She winced when she saw a new face passing the kitchen door and realized that Mr. Terriberry already had filled her place. It was only one small thing more, but it brought again the feeling that the world was sinking beneath her feet.

She stood for a long time with her forehead resting on her folded arms which lay upon the top rail of the corral. The big 'bus horses shoved her gently with their soft muzzles, impatient to be noticed, but she did not lift her head until a step upon the hard-trodden yard roused her from her apathy of dull misery. She glanced around indifferently to see old Edouard Dubois lumbering toward her in the fast gathering dusk.

Dubois's self-conscious, ingratiating smile did not fade because she drew her arched eyebrows together in a slight frown. It took more than an unwelcoming face to divert the obstinate old Frenchman from any purpose firmly fixed in his mind.

"Ha--I am ver' glad to find you alone, Mees Teesdale, I lak have leetle talk with you." There was a purposeful look behind his set smile of agreeableness.

She shrank from him a little as he came close to her, but he appeared not to notice the movement, and went on--

"I hear you are in trouble--eh? I hear you get fire from ze hotel?"

Again the girl's face took on its new look of bitterness. That was the way in which they were expressing it, spreading the news throughout the town. They were losing no time--her friends.

"'Fired' is the word when a biscuit-shooter is dismissed," she returned coldly.

"I hear you get lef' by that loafer, too. I tole you, mam'selle, that fellow Van Lennop no good. I know that kind, I see that kind before, Mees Teesdale. Lak every pretty girl an' have good time, then 'pouf!--zat is all!"

She turned upon him hotly, her face a mixture of humiliation and angry resentment.

"You can't criticise him to me, Mr. Dubois! I won't listen. If I have been fool enough to misunderstand his kindness that's my fault, not his."

Dubois's eyes became suddenly inscrutable. After a moment's silence he said quietly--

"You love heem, I think. Zat iss too bad for you. What you do now, Mees Teesdale? Where you go?"

He saw that her clasped hands tightened at the question, though she replied calmly--