THE WINDOW OF THE SPHINX
lowing him and shaking the breath out of him. The fellow wasn't worth while knocking down! Dragging forward the woman into the business, shouting out her name! Who had supposed she cared a flip of her finger? Who had supposed she had given Carron a thought? His face was hot in the chilly moonlight. But then the cooler reflection followed, the poor devil was in love with her himself—and jealous. That tirade he had poured out had been the very ecstasy of jealousy; proprietorship, trying to assert itself. But there was more than that in it. There was something strange and contradictory. "If he didn't want me to get the horse," Carron reflected, "why the devil did he give me the right direction in the first place! Why, if he loves her and is afraid of her, why didn't he lie, up and down, to me; lead me astray? He'd have had the twenty dollars just as surely." He slapped his thigh. "But he did want me to get the horse! He did, in the first place. It's his stumbling block. He hoped I would get it out of his way, so she would remember him long enough to look at him." Carron apostrophized the moon. "He's got remorse! Scared! Afraid she'll hear about his part in it; afraid, if I get the horse, the whole thing will come out!" He shook his head. He relinquished the idea of following the fugitive, and at the same time relin-
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