They had entered the avenue. The segment of a late moon was pushing its way through some ragged clouds above the eastern horizon.
They had reached the portico before she answered.
"To save you from him," she said, standing upon the step, so that her face was almost on a level with his own.
"But why?--_why?_ What motive caused you to jeopardize your good name, to place yourself in a position which would compromise you forever were it known. Was it friendship alone?"
His face was almost fierce in the wan light, and his eyes were glowing.
There was a note of sadness in her voice, and her eyes fell.
Glenning took her hand, and came closer to her.
She looked up, and her brave, truthful eyes met his squarely.
"There is yet something in the way," she said, smiling as through pain, "before you may--"
"What is it?" he broke in, eagerly. "Speak!"
Then she was gone, and he was alone with the memory of the past.
In the year of grace in which this story moved, the Macon fair began the tenth day of July. All things were now leading up to it, for July had come, and the days, while really long, passed quickly.
Glenning had a fearful task before him. Only once since that memorable night when so many things had happened--when he had been almost scorned by the girl he loved; when he had held a mob at bay and saved a worthless scoundrel's life; when he had received a young lady caller in his office at two o'clock in the morning; when he had walked home with her to be ruthlessly wakened from his blissful love-dream--only once since that night had he been able to get himself to that point of moral courage which would enable him to make his confession, and plead his cause unhampered and with a conscience at rest. And in that hour when his soul was trembling on the verge of a full disclosure of all that had passed during that hateful, bitter-sweet time in Jericho, an interruption had come at the inopportune moment, and his chance went, for when they were together again alone that very evening he knew that it was impossible for him to speak. He knew, too, that possession and a full reciprocity of affection would never be his until he had lain bare that hidden portion of his life. He wanted to tell it; he wanted her to know. It was not a desire for concealment which held his tongue. That night when they stood in the wan moonlight by the portico steps, he had forgotten the untold secret. He knew only that she was before him, very close to him; that he had held her hand, had, for a few moments, pressed her young body to his as they went down the steps at his office; knew that she had filled him and thrilled him with a rare happiness, and that life without her would be commonplace, sunless and dreary. Another moment his consuming love would have been pouring from his lips in fervent words of fire, when he heard that name which he had come to hate--"Jericho!"