She twisted the paper of the bank draft in her fingers, unconsciously dropped it on the ground.
“No,” said she, honest always; “there are some things that one can’t pay. There are some things that can’t be paid. But I sent you the draft, guessing at the total because I could never get a statement from the men fairly covering the advances you made us without my knowledge. We did eat your bread. Without you and your supplies—your horses, your everything—without your care and help all the way over the trail, we couldn’t have started and couldn’t have got through. Ah”—bitterly—“we couldn’t even have sold so well at the end of the trail. That’s all true. It’s the cruelest truth that ever was offered me.”
“You didn’t want to be helped, not even by your neighbor?”
“Not in that way; not after all—after everything—after some things had come out as they did.”
“You mean, after your own fault had found you out, don’t you? Isn’t that the cruelest part of it?”
His words were merciless, yet his voice was kind, gentle, beyond compare with any voice she had heard in all her life.
“Yes!” she broke out. “Yes, I suppose that’s true. But you have had no mercy; you show none now. Did you come here this morning to make me say that?”
“Yes,” said Dan McMasters; “that is why I did come. I knew that sometime you’d want to tell me that. I knew that before I went away from you, you’d want to be Lockhart enough to admit to a McMasters that no McMasters ever born could be the dishonorable man you thought I was. You sent me out of your camp with a brand on me that I never would have taken if I hadn’t loved you the first minute I saw you—and if I hadn’t known that some day you’d want to tell me you were wrong.”
Anastasie Lockhart spread out her hands.
“Haven’t I? I have repented it every night and every day since then. But of what use? You are not one who can forgive. You only want to shame and humiliate me, you can’t forgive. You wouldn’t let me, wouldn’t believe me, wouldn’t forgive me. You say you can’t change.”