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move off down the boardwalk, still carrying her hat in her hand, a straight girl with a proud walk. A faint curiosity stirred within him as he watched her, and for a moment his face lost its unaccustomed soberness, and then he turned and stepped into the saddle.

Chapter 2
    Tavister’s house was a high, two-story affair set on a corner behind a deep lawn, and from the porch chair where Carrie sat in the darkness now, the sounds of the main street two blocks away were distant and muffled. She heard her father prowling about his study upstairs; a buggy passed on the street, the hoof-beats of the horse muffled in the thick summer dust, and after that it was quiet.
    Too quiet, Carrie thought dismally. After five years of waiting, she should have learned to curb her impatience, but she never had. The mere knowledge that word had been sent to Frank had brought her out here for the last three nights. If her pride allowed it, she knew she would have been waiting at the stepping block—as close to him, she thought wryly, as she could get.
    The pots of geraniums strung along the front steps had ceased gurgling and bubbling from the water she had already given them, and now she leaned down for the watering can beside her to give them more. This was a ritual in the summer, so old its origin was lost in childhood. Three times a week, all the pots of flowers in the house were brought out, lined along the steps, and thoroughly drenched.
    She was bent over, fumbling for the can in the darkness of the porch, when she heard the hoofbeats. Rising quickly, she saw the dim shape of a rider come even with the walk, pass the stepping block, and dismount.
    A feeling of excitement almost choked her, but she remained where she was. At last, by the dim lamplight of the hall shining through the front door, she saw him, tramping up the walk, and she thought, You’ve waited. Don’t spoil it now . She came slowly to the steps and said in a voice almost shaking, “Be careful of those steps, Frank. I’ve got all the geraniums on them.”
    She saw Frank halt and peer down, and then she heard him swear mildly as he tumbled one over in his haste to reach her.
    She was in his arms then, and she kissed him lingeringly. For three seconds, she forgot herself, forgot her resolves and her promises to herself, and gave herself to him.
    She felt her arm being pulled gently then as he moved her over to the doorway and into the light. She stood there while he leaned against the jamb and looked at her hungrily. Because she was excited and pleased, her small, grave face, her wide green eyes were stirred with pleasure and with love. Her hair, black as a cricket and as shiny, was pinned in careless curls atop her head, and the dress she wore, of some stiff pale yellow stuff, demurely hid the rounded softness of her small body.
    Frank only watched her, his face blurred in the half-light, and finally Carrie laughed. “Say something, you fool,” she murmured. “All I’ve heard you say are swear-words.”
    Frank drew her to him again and kissed her, and then he said, “All right. I’m hungry.”
    Carrie laughed again, hugged him impulsively, and then went through the doorway into the hall. She hummed a small tune now as she went ahead of him into the big kitchen where the lamp was turned low. She was a fool for being so happy, she knew, but right now it didn’t matter. She was grateful enough to live only in the present, right now.
    Standing on tiptoe, she turned up the lamp, and then she turned to look at him over her shoulder. He needed a shave, and his short curly hair was tousled, but that could no more blur the edge of him than a stain could blunt the steel of a knife, she thought with a sudden envy. He walked past the counter and in passing reached out and lifted the lid of the cooky crock in the prowling, artless way of a hungry animal, his movements quick and restless. When he caught her watching him his grin