He too had seen the mist in Dora’s eyes; and, with Smith’s words, the air-castles which had persistently built themselves without volition on his part, crumbled. There was nothing for him to do but to efface himself as quickly and as completely as possible. The sight of him could only be painful to Dora, and he wished to spare her all of that within his power.
He looked at the foothills, the red butte rising in their midst, the tinted Bad Lands, the winding, willow-fringed creek. It was all beautiful in its bizarre colorings; but the spirit of the picture, the warm, glowing heart of it, had gone from it for him. The world looked a dull and lifeless place. His love for Dora was greater than he had known, far mightier than he had realized until the end, the positive end, had come.
“Oh, Dora!” he whispered in utter wretchedness. “Dear little Schoolmarm!”
In the room behind the white-curtained window the Schoolmarm walked the floor with her cheeks aflame and as close to hysteria as ever she had been in her life.
“What will he think of me!” she asked herself over and over again, clasping and unclasping her cold hands. “What can he think but one thing?”
The more overwrought she became, the worse the situation seemed.
“And how he looked at me! How they all looked at me! Oh, it was too dreadful!”
She covered her burning face with her hands.
“There isn’t the slightest doubt,” she went on, “but that he thinks I knew all about it. Perhaps”—she paused in front of the mirror and stared into her own horrified eyes—“perhaps he thinks I belong to a gang of robbers! Maybe he thinks I am Smith’s tool, or that Smith is my tool, or something like that! Oh, whatever made him say such a thing! ‘Our stake—our stake’—and—‘I done it for you!’”
Another thought, still more terrifying occurred to her excited mind: