At such a time wild beasts, with hostility born in their blood, draw close together. It was a storm to resolve, as it were, all complex shades of human feeling into their elementary colours--when fear and hate and love stand starkly forth, unqualified, unblended. Without being aware that she was observing, Katherine sensed that Bruce's agitation was mounting with the storm. And as she felt his quivering presence beside her in the furious darkness, her own emotion surged up with a wild and startling strength.

A tree top snapped off just before them with its toy thunder.

"Will this never stop!" gasped Bruce, huskily. "G.o.d, I wish I had you safe home!"

The tremulous tensity in his voice set her heart to leaping with an unrestraint yet wilder. But she did not answer.

Suddenly Nelly stumbled in a gully and Katherine pitched forward from the saddle. She would have fallen, had not a pair of strong arms closed about her in mid-air.

"Katherine--Katherine!" Bruce cried, distracted. Nelly righted herself and Katherine regained her seat, but Bruce still kept his arm about her. "Tell me--are you hurt?" he demanded.

She felt the arms around her trembling with intensity.

"No," she said with a strange choking.

"Oh, Katherine--Katherine!" he burst out. "If you only knew how I love you!"

What she felt could not crystallize itself into words.

"Do you love me?" he asked huskily.

Just then there was a flash of lightning. It showed her his upturned face, appealing, tender, pa.s.sion-wrought. A wild, exultant thrill swept through her. Without thinking, without speaking, her tingling arm reached out, of its own volition as it were, and closed about his neck, and she bent down and kissed him.

"Katherine!" he breathed hoa.r.s.ely. "Katherine!" And he crushed her convulsively to him.

She lay thrilled in his arms.... After a minute they moved on, his arm about her waist, her arm about his neck. Rain, wind, thunder were forgotten. Forgotten were their theories of life. For that hour the man and woman in them were supremely happy.

CHAPTER XVII

THE CUP OF BLISS

The next morning Katherine lay abed in that delicious la.s.situde which is the compound of complete exhaustion and of a happiness that tingles through every furthermost nerve. And as she lay there she thought dazedly of the miracle that had come to pa.s.s. She had not even guessed that she was in love with Arnold Bruce. In fact, she had been resisting her growing admiration for him, and the day before she could hardly have told whether her liking was greater than her hostility.

Then, suddenly, out there in the storm, all complex counter-feelings had been swept side, and she had been revealed to herself.

She was tremulously, tumultuously happy. She had had likings for men before, but she had never guessed that love was such a mighty, exultant thing as this. But, as she lay there, the thoughts that had never come to her in the storm out there on the River Road, slipped into her mind. Into her exultant, fearful, dizzy happiness there crept a fear of the future. She clung with all her soul to the ideas of the life she wished to live; she knew that he, in all sincerity, was militantly opposed to those ideas. Difference in religious belief had brought bitterness, tragedy even, into the lives of many a pair of lovers. The difference in their case was no less firmly held to on either side, and she realized that the day must come when their ideas must clash, when they two must fight it out. Quivering with love though she was, she could but look forward to that inevitable day with fear.

But there were too many other new matters tossing in her brain for her to dwell long upon this dread. At times she could but smile whimsically at the perversity of love. The little G.o.d was doubtless laughing in impish glee at what he had brought about. She had always thought in a vague way that she would sometime marry, but she had always regarded it as a matter of course that the man she would fall in love with would be one in thorough sympathy with her ideas and who would help her realize her dream. And here she had fallen in love with that dreamed-of man's exact ant.i.thesis!

And yet, as she thought of Arnold Bruce, she could not imagine herself loving any other man in all the world.

Love gave her a new cause for jubilation over her last night's discovery. Victory, should she win it, and win it before election, had now an added value--it would help the man she loved. But as she thought over her discovery, she realized that while she might create a scandal with it, it was not sufficient evidence nor the particular evidence that she desired. Blake and Peck would both deny the meeting, and against Blake's denial her word would count for nothing, either in court or before the people of Westville. And she could not be present at another conference with two or three witnesses, for the pair had last night settled all matters and had agreed that it would be unnecessary to meet again. Her discovery, she perceived more clearly than on the night before, was not so much evidence as the basis for a more enlightened and a more hopeful investigation.

Another matter, one that had concerned her little while Bruce had held but a dubious place in her esteem, now flashed into her mind and a.s.sumed a large importance. The other party, as she knew, was using Bruce's friendship for her as a campaign argument against him; not on the platform of course--it never gained that dignity--but in the street, and wherever the followers of the hostile camps engaged in political skirmish. Its sharpest use was by good housewives, with whom suffrage could be exercised solely by influencing their husbands'

ballots. "What, vote for Mr. Bruce! Don't you know he's a friend of that woman lawyer? A man who can see anything in that Katherine West is no fit man for mayor!"

All this talk, Katherine now realized, was in some degree injuring Bruce's candidacy. With a sudden pain at the heart she now demanded of herself, would it be fair to the man she loved to continue this open intimacy? Should not she, for his best interests, urge him, require him, to see her no more?

She was in the midst of this new problem, when her Aunt Rachel brought her in a telegram. She read it through, and on the instant the problem fled her mind. She lay and thought excitedly--hour after hour--and her old plans altered where they had been fixed, and took on definite form where previously they had been unsettled.

The early afternoon found her in the office of old Hosie Hollingsworth.

"What do you think of that?" she demanded, handing him the telegram.

Old Hosie read it with a puzzled look. Then slowly he repeated it aloud:

"'Bouncing boy arrived Tuesday morning. All doing well. John.'" He raised his eyes to Katherine. "I'm always glad to see people lend the census a helping hand," he drawled. "But who in Old Harry is John?"

"Mr. Henry Manning. The New York detective I told you about."

"Eh? Then what----"

"It's a cipher telegram," Katherine explained with an excited smile.

"It means that he will arrive in Westville this afternoon, and will stay as long as I need him."

"But what should he send that sort of a fool thing for?"

"Didn't I tell you that he and I are to have no apparent relations whatever? An ordinary telegram, coming through that gossiping Mr.

Gordon at the telegraph office, would have given us away. Now I've come to you to talk over with you some new plans for Mr. Manning. But first I want to tell you something else."

She briefly outlined what she had learned the night before; and then, without waiting to hear out his e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.ns, rapidly continued: "I told Mr. Manning to come straight to you, on his arrival, to learn how matters stood. All my communications to him, and his to me, are to be through you. Tell him everything, including about last night."

"And what is he to do?"

"I was just coming to that." Her brown eyes were gleaming with excitement. "Here's my plan. It seems to me that if Blind Charlie Peck could force his way into Mr. Blake's scheme and become a partner in it, then Mr. Manning can, too."

Old Hosie blinked.

"Eh? Eh? How?"

"You are to tell Mr. Manning that he is Mr. Hartsell, or whoever he pleases, a real estate dealer from the East, and that his ostensible business in Westville is to invest in farm lands. Buying in run-down or undrained farms at a low price and putting them in good condition, that's a profitable business these days. Besides, since you are an agent for farm lands, that will explain his relations with you.

Understand?"

"Yes. What next?"

"Secretly, he is to go around studying the water-works. Only not so secretly that he won't be noticed."

"But what's that for?"

"Buying farm land is only a blind to hide his real business," she went on rapidly. "His real business here is to look into the condition of the water-works with a view to buying them in. He is a private agent of Seymour & Burnett; you remember I am empowered to buy the system for Mr. Seymour. When Mr. Blake and Mr. Peck discover that a man is secretly examining the water-works--and they'll discover it all right; when they discover that this man is the agent of Mr. Seymour, with all the Seymour millions behind him--and we'll see that they discover that, too--don't you see that when they make these discoveries this may set them to thinking, and something may happen?"

"I don't just see it yet," said Old Hosie slowly, "but it sounds like there might be something mighty big there."

"When Mr. Blake learns there is another secret buyer in the field, a rival buyer ready and able to run the price up to three times what he expects to pay--why, he'll see danger of his whole plan going to ruin.

Won't his natural impulse be, rather than run such a risk, to try to take the new man in?--just as he took in Blind Charlie Peck?"