concerned, "went all to pieces," as someone else had said about himself
to her.

She was not without the wiles and tact of her sex. "You go now, and come
back, Abe," she said in a soft voice. "Come back in an hour. Come back
then, and I'll tell you which way I'm going from here."

He was all right again. "It's with you, Nancy," he said eagerly. "I bin
waiting four years."

As he closed the door behind him the "college pup" entered the room
again. "Oh, Abe's gone!" he said excitedly. "I hoped you'd get rid of
the old rip-roarer. I wanted to be alone with you for a while. I don't
really need to start yet. With the full moon I can do it before
daylight." Then, with quick warmth, "Ah, Nancy, Nancy, you're a flower--
the flower of all the prairies," he added, catching her hand and laughing
into her eyes.

She flushed, and for a moment seemed almost bewildered. His boldness,
joined to an air of insinuation and understanding, had influenced her
greatly from the first moment they had met two months ago, as he was
going South on his smuggling enterprise. The easy way in which he had
talked to her, the extraordinary sense he seemed to have of what was
going on in her mind, the confidential meaning in voice and tone and
words had, somehow, opened up a side of her nature hitherto unexplored.
She had talked with him freely then, for it was only when he left her
that he said what he instinctively knew she would remember till they met
again. His quick comments, his indirect but acute questions, his
exciting and alluring reminiscences of the East, his subtle yet seemingly
frank compliments, had only stimulated a new capacity in her, evoked