Sinking into a chair, she sobbed in helpless, angry despair.
"Oh, how shameful, how shameful!"
He let her alone for a little; then, when the violence of her sobbing had died away, came over and laid his hand gently on her shoulder.
"Hadn't you better cave in, my girl? You've tried your strength against mine and it hasn't amounted to much. You even tried to shoot me and I only made you look like a darned fool. I guess you're beat, my girl. There's only one law here. That's the law of the strongest. You've got to do what I want because I can make you."
"Haven't you any generosity?"
"Not the kind you want, I guess."
She gave a little moan of anguish.
"Hark!" He held up his hand as if to call her attention to something. For a moment, hope flamed from its embers. But stealing a glance at his face from beneath her drooping lashes, she saw that she was mistaken. The last spark died, to be rekindled no more.
"Listen! Listen to the silence. Can't you hear it, the silence of the prairie? Why, we might be the only two people in the world, you and me, here in this little shack, right out in the prairie. Are you listening? There ain't a sound. It might be the garden of Eden. What's that about male and female, created He them? I guess you're my wife, my girl. And I want you."
Nora gave him a sidelong look of terror and remained dumb. What would have been the use of words even if she could have found voice to utter them?