She had the same trick of smiling with her eyes when there was no mirth lurking in the corners of her full lips, the same full-throated little laugh that carried the faintest hint of mockery in its thrill. Year by year her slim body lost its unformed boyishness in a new soft roundness which her long outgrown skirt and too scant little waist failed completely to conceal. And the hillsfolk were given to shaking their heads over her now, just as the generation before had done, for to cap it all–the last straw upon the back of their toleration–Dryad Anderson had “took up” with Denny Bolton, Young Denny, the last of his name. Nothing more was needed to damn her forever in the eyes of the hills people, although they could not have explained just why, even if they had tried.
And Young Denny, waiting there in the thickening dusk before his own dark place, smiled gravely back at that single blinking light in the window of the cottage squatting under the hill–he smiled with whimsical gentleness, a man’s smile that softened somehow the hard lines of jaw and lip. It was more than three years now since the first night when he had stood and watched for it to flash out across the valley before he had turned and gone to set a lamp in the dark front windows behind him in answer to it.
He could never remember just how they had agreed upon that signal–there had never been any mutual agreement–but every Saturday night since that first one, three years back, he had come in from his week’s work, ploughing or planting or teaming back in the timber and waited for it to call to him, just at dusk, across the valley.
His hand went tentatively to his chin, absently caressing his lean cheeks as he remembered that day. Late in the afternoon he had found a rabbit caught fast in a snare which he had set deep in the thicket, and the little animal had squealed in terror, just as rabbits always squeal, when he leaned and took it from the trap. And when he had straightened to his feet with it clutched fast in his arms, to look for a club with which to end its struggles quickly, his eyes had lifted to encounter the stormy eyes of the girl who had flashed up before him as silently as a shadow from the empty air.
Her two small brown fists were tight clenched against her breast; she was breathing in short irregular gasps as if she had been running hard.
At first Denny Bolton had been too amazed to do more than stare blankly into her blazing eyes; then before that burning glare his face began to redden consciously and his gaze dropped, wavering from her face to the little blouse so long outgrown that it strained far open across the girl’s round throat, doubly white by contrast below the brown line where the clear tan ended.
His glance went down from the fierce little face to the tight skirt, shiny from long wear and so short that the hem hung high above her slim ankles; and from there down to the cracked, broken shoes, string-laced and sized too large for her fine drawn feet. They were old and patched–the stockings–so thickly darned that there was little of the original fabric left, but for all the patches there were still wide gashes in them, fresh torn by the thorns, through which the flesh beneath showed very white.
Her face colored, too, as Young Denny’s uncomfortable scrutiny passed over her. It flamed painfully from throat to hair and then went very white. She tried vainly with one hand to close the gap at her throat, while the other struggled to settle the dingy old skirt a little lower on her childish hips. But her hot eyes clung unwaveringly to the boy’s face. Suddenly she lifted one hand and pointed a quivering finger at the furry mass palpitating in his arms.
“What are you going to do with it?” she demanded.
Young Denny started at the question. The uncompromising directness of the words startled him even more than had her first swift, silent coming. Involuntarily, spasmodically his arms closed until the rabbit squealed again in an ecstasy of terror.
“Why, I–I reckon to eat him!” he blurted at last, and then his face grew hotter than ever at the baldness of the answer.
It was hard to follow the change that flashed over her face as she became conscious of his blundering, clumsy embarrassment. It came too quickly for that, but the angry light faded from her eyes and her lips began to curve in the faintest of quizzical smiles. She even forgot the too short skirt and gaping blouse to raise both hands toward him in coaxing coquetry.
“Please let him go,” she wheedled softly. “Please let him go–for me!”
Young Denny backed away a step from her upturned face and outstretched hands, grinning a little as he slowly shook his head. It bewildered him–puzzled him–this swift change to supplication.
“Can’t,” he refused laconically. “I–I got to have him to eat.”
His voice was calmly final and for no other reason than to learn what she would do next, because already the boy knew that the soft creature throbbing against him was to have its freedom again. No one, at least since he could remember, had ever before smiled and asked Denny Bolton to “do it–for me.” For one flashing instant he saw her eyes flare at his candid refusal; then they cleared again with that same miraculous swiftness. Once more the corners of her lips lifted pleadingly, arched with guileful, provocative sweetness.
“Please,” she begged, even more softly, “please–because I ask you to!”
Once more Young Denny shook his head.
Standing there before his dark house, still smiling vaguely at the light across the valley his fingers tentatively caressed his lean cheeks where her fingernails had bit deep through the skin that day. He never remembered how it had happened–it all came too swiftly for recollection–but even before he had finished shaking his head the tempting smile had been wiped from her lips, her little face working convulsively with rage, before she sprang at him–sprang with lithe, lightning, tigerlike ferocity that sent him staggering back before her.
Her hands found his face and tore deep through the skin before he could lift his wide-flung arms to protect it. And then, almost before he realized what had happened, she stood back, groping blindly away from him until her hands found a birch sapling. She clung to it with a desperately tight clasp as if to hold herself erect. A little spot of red flecked her own lip where her locked teeth had cut through. She swayed a moment, dizzily, the too-tight little waist gaping at her throat as she struggled for breath.
“There–there!” she gasped at him voicelessly. “There,” she whispered through her white lips, “now will you let him go?”
And Denny Bolton had stood that afternoon in wondering silence, gazing back into her twitching, distorted face without a word while the blood oozed from the deep cuts in his cheeks and dripped noisily upon the dry leaves. Once he turned and followed with his eyes the mad flight of the rabbit through the underbrush; and then turned slowly back to her.
“Why, he’s gone already,” he stated with a gentle gravity that was almost ponderous. And with a deliberation which he meant more to comfort than to conciliate: “I–I aimed to let him go, myself, right from the first time you asked me–after a while!”
She cried over him that afternoon–cried not as he had known other girls to cry, but with long noiseless gasps that shook her thin shoulders terribly. Her eyes swam with great drops that hung from her lashes and went rolling silently down her small face while she washed out the cuts with one sleeve ruthlessly wrenched from her blouse and soaked in the brook nearby.
But in almost the same breath while she crooned pityingly over him she bade him–commanded him with a swift, fierce passionate vehemence–to tell her that it did not hurt–did not hurt very much! And before she would let him go that day she made him promise to come back–she promised herself to set a light in the front window of the shabby little cottage to tell him that she had found the plaster–that there was enough left to close the cuts.
There had never been any spoken agreement between them, but since that night, three years ago, Denny Bolton had learned to watch each week end, just at dusk, for the signal to appear. From the first their very loneliness