Free The Forfeit by Ridgwell Cullum Page B

had been spoken with an intensity of bitterness that left an impression as hard as flint. The tone had set her shuddering. Then the look in those cold blue eyes when at last she had turned confronting them. No, there had been no mercy in them. No mercy, she told herself, for-anybody.
    At that moment she had known that the earth could hold no future peace for her. She felt that Fate had passed sentence on her, and she was powerless to stay its execution. Her husband demanded vengeance upon the man who had accepted the price of his brother's blood.
    For the moment she had been stunned. Then had risen up in her a desperate courage. She would fight. She would fight for herself, she would fight for the love which all unbidden, all undesired, had come to her. Then, in the end, if defeat should overtake her, she would, yes, she could, submit to the punishment his hand should mete out to her.
    Strangely, from that moment her love for this man seemed to increase a thousandfold. He grew in her heart a towering colossus of worship. The primitive in her bowed down before his image ready to yield to his lightest word, while, by every art, she was ready to cajole and foster his love.
    It was all she knew, understood. It was the woman in her who possessed no other weapons of defense. She loved him, she desired him, then nothing was too small to cling to with the wild hope of the drowning. When the day came that he should turn and rend her soul she could submit. But until that day she would cling to every straw that offered.
    While the scenes through which they were passing preoccupied the man, the silence of the wide plains left Elvine to her fears. The great breadth of the world about her added to her hopelessness. And after a silence which had become unduly protracted, she took refuge in talk for which she had no real desire.
    "It's beautiful, but-oppressive," she said, and the words were the inspiration of genuine thought.
    But the man was like one who has spent a world of love and devotion upon carving a beautiful setting and is now about to complete his work by securing in place the crowning jewel. He had no room for any feeling of oppression. He shook his head.
    "Say, Evie," he cried, "I just can't allow you the word 'oppressive.' I just can't. Look-look right out there toward the hills we're making. Take the colors as they heap up to the distance. Every shade, I guess, from green to purple. It makes me feel good. It gives me room to stretch myself. It sort o' sweeps away a whole heap of fusty city smells, and gives us something a deal more worth breathing. It's a man's place. And it's full of man's work. Guess Providence got busy an' set it all out for us. Providence guessed we'd have to use it. But Providence didn't just guess how far crazy human nature really was. She didn't foresee we'd gather around in the musty dump-holes we call cities. She didn't figure on our tastes for the flesh-pots, and the indulgence of the senses she'd handed us. But then Providence knows her power to fix us right when she feels that way." Then he spread out his arms with an inexpressible suggestion of longing. "Say, I'm crazy-plumb crazy to get the first peek at that dandy home I've had fixed for you."
    The woman's eyes sought her husband's with a smile that was a caress.
    "You're good to me, Jeff," she said. Then she added: "So good." Her smile deepened. "You'd hand me the world with-with a fence around it, if I asked. Why? Why are you like that?"
    It was the love in her seeking reassurance. Nor was she disappointed.
    "Why?" The man laughed. And the sound of it was good to hear. It was deep, and seemed to come from the depths of his soul. His blue eyes shone with a world of devotion. "Guess I love you-just that," he said. Then he pointed at the distant hills. "I can't tell you all I feel, Elvie," he said, "but get those hills. See them. There, that peak, sitting right up over its fellows, with a cap of snow on it I don't guess the sun could ever melt.