The Last Woman

"Won't you sit down?" she asked him. She was beginning to be a bit uneasy, because of Morton's determined attitude, and because she realized that nothing she could say or do would turn him from his set purpose of saying what he had come there to tell her.

"Not yet," he replied. "I can talk much better on my feet. I want you to tell me what you meant by two expressions you used in your speech with me yesterday, after you came from your father's office."

"We will not return to that subject, if you please, Mr. Morton," she replied to him, coldly.

"Pardon me, Patricia, we must return to it--at least, I must. You don't want me to kill anybody, do you?" He smiled grimly as he asked the question, hesitatingly; "you need have no fear on that point, for I probably won't have to."

"Probably won't have to kill anyone?" She raised her eyes to his, but there was no fear in them; there was only amazement in their depths, astonishment that he should dare to say such a thing to her.

"The qualification of my statement was made because I reserve the right to do what I please, toward anyone who dares to bring pain upon you, Patricia Langdon," he said, incisively; "but I tell you now that I wouldn't trust myself not to kill--again my Western training is uppermost, you see--if I were brought face to face with any man who had dared to bring any sort of an affront upon you. Do you love this man to whom you referred yesterday? Answer me!" The question came out sharply and bluntly. It was totally unexpected, and it affected her with a sort of shock she could not have described.

"You are impertinent," she replied.

"Impertinent, or not, I desire an answer. If you refuse an answer, I shall find other means of ascertaining. Great God, girl, do you suppose that, when my whole life is at stake, I am going to stand on ceremony and surrender to a few petty conventions, just to please an element of false pride that you have built around you, until there is only one way of getting past it? I'm not the sort of man who stands outside, and entreats. My training has taught me to get inside; and, if there isn't a gate, or an opening of any sort, why, then I tear down the barrier, just as I am doing now. Do you love that man?"

"I will not answer the question."

He laughed, shortly.

"From any other woman than you, such an answer as that would be tantamount to an affirmative; but you are a puzzle, Patricia. You are not like anybody else. There is a depth to you that I cannot sound. There is a breadth to you that is like the open country of the Northwest, where one cannot see beyond the sky-line, ever, and where the sky-line remains, always, just so far away."