For a moment he seemed stunned but he tightened his arms about her, and tense the answer came. "I can't do without you, Belle, I can't do without you. I've given you my word. I take you on your terms."
"Oh, Jim!" and she broke down, passionately sobbing in his arms. "Oh, Jim! You great, glorious, wonderful, blind Jim Hartigan, don't you know that I love you? Don't you know I have thought it all out? Can't you see where Blazing Star was taking you? It is not caprice; you will know some day."
"I know, I know now. I'll do what you say."
"Then turn right around and go back to Fort Ryan." They turned; she led; and they raced without pulling rein.
"Colonel, I've come to take your offer," said Hartigan.
"You're a wise man," said the Colonel. "Come into the office." He drew up a check for five hundred dollars. Jim put it in his wallet and said feebly, "He's yours. You'll be kind to him?" Then he covered his face with his hands, and the tears splashed through his fingers to the floor.
"Never mind," said the Colonel, deeply touched. "He'll be treated like a king. You'll see him in the race next summer and you'll see him win."
In all the blackness of that hour of loss that thought was the one gleam of comfort in the realm of horse. Now he would see his racer on the track. The Church held him, but held his horse no longer.
Then the Angel of Destiny as he downward gazed, said to the Angel of the Fire—and his voice trembled a little as he spoke—"Rejoice, for the furnace was heated exceeding hot and the metal is shining brighter, far brighter than before."