In her gentle love of peace the bickerings that surrounded her made her shrink within herself, wondering, staunch in her faith that her daddy and Adrian were right--without these blundering, uneducated foreigners being quite as bad as their masters thought.

 

Desiring to escape it all for a time, she crept away one late afternoon when Adrian and her father were in conference with the two Policemen. They did not seem to notice. Less than a week ahead was the commencement of the last operation on the trestle before handing over to the big contractors complete; and the anxiety of the moment spoke in the firmness of their tone and the grimness of their measures. Tressa stole away, troubled at heart.

 

In her favourite retreat, a cluster of slender birch trees deep in the forest, she seated herself on a fallen trunk and unrolled her crocheting. Through the thin foliage the sun filtered over her hair and spangled the ground at her feet. A breeze as gentle as herself whispered above her head in friendly commune with the great rustle of the forest. Secluded without being closed in from the light, she felt that she might untangle there more clearly the trifling problems of her sheltered life.

 

As she worked she hummed. Into the network of woven threads she was weaving the future--a month hence--a year--two years--five. And the pictures pleased her progressively. Adrian, laughing into her eyes after the season's hard struggle, was at her side . . . a happy husband then . . . a beaming and foolishly proud father; and little tots with their father's fair hair--

 

Something--more a feeling than a sound--arrested her. She flushed at the thought that some one was looking at the pictures of her imagination. Abashed, perhaps a trifle annoyed, but without a thought of fear, she lifted her eyes. But when she beheld Koppy, hat in hand, standing at the edge of her retreat with head bowed, his humility seemed to call only for the sympathy always denied him. With maidenly modesty she gathered her work to tighter compass, but no other restraint did she feel in the presence of the man her friends accused of unthinkable crimes. The inheritance of her femininity assured her that she was in no danger. Koppy had always liked her--she knew that also by virtue of that inheritance; and every woman loves the strong thing that bends to her--loves, but perhaps does not respect.

 

Unconscious of the challenging coyness of words and manner, she spoke:

 

"You didn't frighten me a bit, Koppy."

 

"I didn't want to," he replied in a low voice.

 

"I don't think I heard you. I guess I must have--felt you."

 

He moved swiftly in among the trees and stood before her, soiled hat turning in grimy hands.

 

"You--felt me?"

 

A vague and sudden sense of discomfort made her raise puzzled eyes to his, but she dismissed it firmly as born of her father's suspicions. Still she wished he would not stand so close, stooping over her, with that funny look in his eyes. Suggestively she glanced at the white trunk on which she was seated, and moved further along.

 

"I suppose it's an instinct," she said. "Animals must feel like that about things they can't see or hear. Haven't you often been conscious of being watched when you couldn't see the watcher?"

 

He smiled from a world of superior knowledge; the unseen watcher was the foundation of the big game he was ever playing. The smile ended in a short laugh, and somehow it startled her--she seemed so naked in thought before this strange foreigner.

 

"You know what I mean," she went on lamely. "I suppose a gopher peering from its hole in the ground would disturb me sooner or later."

 

"Don't explain," he almost pleaded, "don't try to explain." He seated himself far up the trunk.

 

Again her puzzled eyes were on him. In some indefinite way he was so different, so--so human and equal. Outwardly there was no evidence of the change--the same nondescript clothes, the same grimy hands and face, the same coarse boots and clumsiness.

 

He seemed to read her thoughts, for with a gesture of long-suppressed protest he threw out his hands.

 

"Yes," he cried, "they're gnarled and dirty, and these old overalls are the mark of my degradation." He flung his hat passionately on the ground. "But I'm not always this way. Back in Chicago I dress--sometimes. There I'm what I like to be, what I can be. Not often--it is not that way I rule."

 

Her eyes were wide with surprise. "You--you speak--"

 

He shrugged his shoulders. "I speak English as well as you or any one else. I think in English. But it pays me to look foreign, to fight outwardly the 'civilising' influences of the country of my adoption." A slight sneer twisted his lips. "I must look like a cut-throat, because in that way I've reached the height I've attained in my organisation. It shocks you, because you don't understand, because you've never had to plough the row I've toiled along. . . . I'm not as bad as I seem."

 

She picked up her work to cover the beating of her heart.

 

"If you're out of sympathy--"

 

"But I'm not out of sympathy," he interrupted earnestly. "I'm a Worker of the World, and always will be. I would prefer not to have to dress like this, but not because I deplore our aims. It is the misfortune of the class of men for whom I fight. Miss Torrance"--he slid abruptly down the trunk and leaned forward to look in her eyes--"I'm talking to you as I never talked before, as I scarcely dared to think. Any one else would hand me over to the Police. You won't. And to talk like this to a fellow-worker would mean a knife slid in here. No, you won't tell. I've known a lot of women, most of them bad ones because that's the only kind I have a chance to meet, but I never knew one to sell a man she did not hate . . . and a woman never hates till she first loves. You've never loved more than one."

 

"And not likely to," she put in quietly, even as she thrilled to the completeness of his trust.

 

He laughed harshly. "They all say that--that is, all but the kind any man can buy. But you know nothing of them--forgive me for mentioning them. . . . There aren't many women stick to their first love."

 

"Oh?" she said indifferently. "I haven't thought it worth discussing."

 

"No? Perhaps you're right. Many a time I've thought the same of woman, all women--until I learned that every woman, good............