“I am sorry to hear that, Stephen,” she declared, quietly. “We want you with us–all of us. But–but tell me,” she concluded, finding the words coming with difficulty–“tell me that you feel no–no antagonism toward me, Stephen, because I can’t–can’t love you as you want me to love you, and that you understand that–that in deciding as I have I–I only wanted to be true–true to both of us!”
For answer he seized both her hands in his. He gazed straight down into her eyes. “I love you, Helen,” he murmured, and then slowly released her fingers.
He left her so quietly that she hardly knew that he was gone. A step on the trail aroused her, and, lifting her eyes, she saw him striding away with shoulders back and head erect, as if awakened to a new manhood. And watching him go, as she felt, for the last time, she could no more control a sob than he at the moment could turn back. For a while she followed him with wistful eyes, then, finding sudden need for consolation, she hurried off the porch and across to the corral. Pat was there to receive her, and she flung her arms around his neck and gave way to sudden tears.
“Pat,” she sobbed, “I–perhaps I do love him! Perhaps I have done wrong! I–I–” She interrupted herself. “What shall I do, Pat?” she burst out, bitterly. “Oh, what shall I do?”
Pat could not advise her. But he remained very still, supporting her weight with dumb patience, until she turned away, going slowly back into the house. Then he pressed close into his corner and sounded a shrill, protracted nicker.
That was all.
He saw the door close. He waited, pursuing his old habit, for all the lights to go out. And directly they began to disappear, one by one, first in the lower half of the house, then in the upper half, until all save one were extinguished. This one, as he knew from long experience, was in the room of his mistress. But though he waited and watched till the moon slanted behind the western hills, and the stars to the east dimmed and faded, and the gray of dawn stole across the sky above the mountains–though he waited and watched till his legs ached from long standing, and his eyes smarted from their steady vigil, and the Mexican appeared yawning from the depths of the stable, and from over toward town rose sounds of worldly activity–yet the light in her room burned on. Then the Mexican drove him into the stable. But not even now did he abandon his vigil. He entered his box-stall, with its tiny square window, and fixed his troubled gaze again upon the house. The sky was bright with coming day. From somewhere arose the crow of a rooster. Out on the river trail a team plodded slowly to market.
But the light in the room was still burning.