"And yet you can't see why you're a gentleman!" said she again slowly.
"You said you'd be going back home again before long?" It was the first thing Sim Gage could say.
"I haven't any home."
"Nor no folks neither?"
"There's not a soul in the world that I could go back to, Mr. Gage. So now, I've told you the truth."
"But there was oncet, maybe?" he said shrewdly. "How old are you?" He flushed suddenly at this question, which he asked before he thought.
"I'm twenty-five."
"You don't look that old. Me, I'm thirty-seven. I'm too old to marry. Now I never will."
"How do you know?" she said. "What do you mean?" As she spoke she felt the tears come again on her cheeks, felt her hands trembling.
"Well, ma'am, I know mighty well I'll never marry now. Of course, if one sort of woman had came out here—big and strong enough to be a housekeeper and nothing else, and all that, and one thing with another—I won't say what might have happened. Strange things has happened that way—right out of them damn Hearts Aflame ads—right around along in here, in this here valley, too, I know. Well, of course, a man can't get along so well, ranching, unless he has a wife——"