"What are you talking about?" he said very roughly.

"About--about our marriage," she repeated trembling, and then, at something in his hardness and his grimness, "Why, what did you mean----?

Must it not be soon?"

A dreadful, deliberate silence engulfed her words.

Coldly Johnny's slow voice broke it.

"Who said anything about marriage?" defiantly he demanded. "I never asked you to marry me."

CHAPTER VIII

JOHNNY BECOMES EXPLICIT

"I never asked you to marry me," he repeated very stiffly.

The crash of all her worlds sounded in Maria Angelina's ears. An aghast bewilderment flooded her soul.

Pitiably she stammered, "Why it--it was understood, was it not? You cared--you--you----"

She could not put into words the memories that beset her stricken consciousness. But the cheeks that had felt his kiss flamed with a sudden burning scarlet.

"What was understood?" said Johnny Byrd. "That I was going to marry you--because I kissed you?" And with that dreadful hostile grimness he insisted, "You knew darned well I wasn't proposing to you."

What did he mean? Had not every action of his been an affirmation of their relation? Did he believe she was one to whom men acted lightly?

Had he never meant to propose to her, never meant to marry?

Last night at the dance--this afternoon in the woods--what had he meant by all his admiration and his boldness?

And that evening on the mountain, when, with his arm around her, he had murmured that he would take care of her. . . . Had he meant nothing by it, nothing, except the casual insolent intimacy which a man would grant a _ballerina_?

Or was he now turning from her in dreadful abandonment because after this scandal she would be too conspicuous to make it agreeable to carry out the intentions--perhaps only the vaguely realized intentions--of the past?

But why then, why had he kissed her on the mountain?

Utter terror beset her. Her voice shook so that the words dropped almost incoherently from the quivering lips.

"But if not--if not--Oh, you must know that now--now it is imperative!"

Shameful beseeching--shameful that she should have to beseech. Where was his manhood, his chivalry--where his compa.s.sion?

"Imperative _nuts_! You don't mean to say you're trying to make me marry you because we got lost in the woods?"

Desperately the girl struggled for dignity.

"It is the least you could do, Signor. Even if--if you had not cared----"

Her voice broke again.

"You little nut." Johnny's tones had altered. More mildly he went on, "I don't quite get you, Ri-Ri, and I don't think you get me. It isn't up to me to do any marrying, if that's honestly what's worrying you. And I'm not going to be stampeded, if that's what you're trying to do. . . . Our reputations will have to stand it."

And this, Maria Angelina despairingly recalled, was the man who had kissed her, had watched the moon rise with his arm about her, promising her his protection. . . . Wildly she wished that she had died before she had come to this--a thing lightly regarded and repudiated.

It was horrible to plead to him but the panic of her plight drove her on.

"Reputations!" she said chokingly. "Yours can stand it, perhaps--but what of me? You cannot be serious, you cannot! Why, it is my name, my life, my everything! . . . You made me come this way. Always I wanted you to go another way, but no, you were sure, you told me to trust to you. And then you pretended to care for me--do you think I would have tolerated your arm about me for one instant if I had not believed it was forever? Oh, if my father were here you would talk differently! Have you no honor? None? . . . Every one knew there was an--an affair of the heart growing between us, and then for us two to disappear--this night alone----"

Her voice kept breaking off. She could not control it or the tears that ran down her face in the darkness. She was a choking, crying wild thing.

Desperately she forced one last insistence, "Oh, you must, you must!"

"Must nothing," Byrd answered her savagely. "What kind of scheme is this, anyhow? I've had a few things tried before but this beats the Dutch. I don't know how much of this talk you mean but I'll tell you right now, young lady, n.o.body can tie me up for life with any such stuff. Father! Honor! Scandal! Believe me, little one, you've got the wrong number."

"You mean--you dare refuse?"

"You bet I dare refuse. There's no sense to all this. n.o.body's going to think the worse of you because you got lost with me--and if you're trying to put anything over, you might as well stop now."

Maria Angelina stopped. It seemed to her that she should die of shame.

Dazedly she stood and looked at him through the darkness out of which a few drops of rain were again falling.

"You just forget it and get a bit of rest," Johnny Byrd advised brusquely. "Hurry in out of the wet. That thing's going to leak again,"

and he nodded jerkily up at the sky.

He tugged open the door, and stricken as a wounded creature crawling to shelter Maria Angelina bent her head and stumbled across the threshold.

"In you go," he said with a more cheerful air. "Wrap yourself up as warm as you can and I'll follow----"

She was within the doorway when these words came. She turned and saw that he was stooping to enter.

"I shall do quite well, Signor," she found her voice quickly to say.

"You need not come in."

"Need not----?" He appeared caught with fresh amazement. "Judas, where do you think I'm going to stay? Out in the rain?"

"Certainly not in here, Signor."

Desperation lent Maria Angelina sudden fire. "You must be mad, Signor!"

she told him fiercely.

"And you madder. You don't think I'm going to stay"--he jerked his head backward--"out in the wet?"

"But naturally. You are a man. It is your place."

"My place--you little Wop! A man! I'd be a dead one." The words of a humorous lecturer smote his memory and with harsh merriment he quoted, "'Good-night, Miss Middleton, said I, as I b.u.t.toned her carefully into her tent and went out to sleep upon a cactus.' . . . None of that stuff for mine," and without more ado Johnny Byrd lowered his head to pa.s.s under the doorway.