“Yes; after we are married,” he smiled, ironically.

“That will be as soon as we can get to town, I presume,” she went on, watching him with brazen directness.  “You see,” she explained; “I have been here with you for about two weeks, you know, and my friends will ask embarrassing questions.  You are so honorable that you cannot refuse to protect my reputation.”

“I am sorry, of course, Miss Wharton.  But you should have considered your reputation before you decided to come here.”

“You mean that you won’t marry me?” she demanded.  She got up and walked toward him, halting within a pace of him and standing stiffly before him.

“You have perception, after all, it seems,” he said, gravely.  “But you don’t understand human nature.  No man—­or woman—­in this section will see anything wrong in your staying in this cabin with me during the storm.  They will accept it as being the most natural thing in the world.  It was a simple act of humanness for me to take you in, and it entails no offer of marriage.  Perhaps it has been done, and will be done again, where there is an inclination to marry.  It has been done in books, and in certain sections of the world where narrow-minded people are the manufacturers of public sentiment.  The mere fact that I happened to save your life does not obligate me to marry you, Miss Wharton.  And I do not feel like playing the martyr.”

For an instant it seemed that Della would become hysterical.  But when she looked into Lawler’s eyes and realized that mere acting would not deceive him, she sneered.

“I might have known you wouldn’t be man enough to protect me!”

Lawler smiled, but did not answer.  And after an instant, during which Della surveyed him with scorn unspeakable, she strode stiffly to a chair in a far corner of the room and dropped into it.

Lawler had been little affected.  He pitied her because of her perverted moral sense, which sought an honorable marriage from a wild, immoral impulse.  He pitied her because she was what she was—­a wanton who was determined by scheme and wile to gain her ends.  And he shrewdly suspected that she was not so much concerned for her reputation as she was eager to achieve what she had determined upon.  Defeat to her kind is intolerable.

“Gary Warden will never marry me if he discovers that I have been here,” declared Della from the corner.

“You said you did not love Warden, Miss Wharton,” Lawler reminded her.  “You wouldn’t marry a man you merely liked, would you?”

“We have been engaged for a year.  Certainly, I shall marry him.  Why not?  But he won’t have me, now!”

“Does Warden love you, Miss Wharton?”

“That doesn’t concern you!” she snapped.

“No—­not in the least.  But if Warden loves you, and I went to him and explained that your being here was accidental——­”

“Bah!” she sneered; “you’re a fool, Lawler!  Do you expect Gary Warden would swallow that!  You don’t know him!”