If Nance was innocent, why had she kept all this from
him, why had she refused in the end to let him defend her good name?
He thought of his own struggle to be good; of his ceaseless efforts to be
decent in every thought as well as deed for Nance's sake. Decent! His lip
curled at the irony of it! That wasn't what girls wanted? Decency made
fellows stupid and dull; it kept them too closely at work; it made them
take life too seriously. Girls wanted men like Mac Clarke--men who
snapped their fingers at religion and refused responsibilities, and
laughed in the face of duty. Laughter! That was what Nance loved above
everything! All right, let her have it! What did it matter? He would
laugh too.
With a reckless resolve, he turned up his coat collar, rammed his hands
in his pockets, and started toward the Kentucky shore. The drizzle by
this time had turned into a sharp rain, and he realized that he was cold
and wet. He remembered a swinging door two squares away.
As he left the bridge, he saw the woman in the blue veil hurry past him,
and with a furtive look about her, turn and go down the steep levee
toward the water. There was something so nervous and erratic in her
movements, that he stopped to watch her.
For a few moments she wandered aimlessly along the bank, apparently
indifferent to the pelting rain; then she succeeded, after some
difficulty, in climbing out on one of the coal barges that fringed the
river bank.
[Illustration: "Don't call a policeman!" she implored wildly]
Dan glanced down the long length of the bridge, empty now save for a few
pedestrians and a lumbering truck in the distance.
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