“Well, I still don’t see why you couldn’t marry him.”
“You’ve forgotten the mush, father, but that isn’t all. There’s something different about Mike 82 lately, something I have never noticed before. His eye seems shifty; he avoids all the family. If I didn’t know him so well, I should think he was a criminal. Leaving out the fact that I don’t love him, and that the very thought of his ever touching me makes me shudder, this distrust of him would be enough to block any such arrangements. Why”—and her lip curled scornfully—“I would marry Bud Larkin a hundred times rather than Mike Stelton once.”
“What!”
Bissell rose to his feet with the quiet, amazed exclamation. He could hardly credit his ears.
“Marry that dirty sheepman?” he continued in a tense, even voice. “I’d like to know what put that crazy notion in yore head. Don’t tell me you are in love with that dude.”
“No, I am not,” answered the girl just as evenly, “but I may as well tell you frankly, that he is the only man within a radius of three hundred miles who has certain things I must have in a husband. I’m sorry if I displease you, father!” she cried, going to him affectionately, “but I could never love any one not of our class.”
That diplomatic “our” did not deceive Bissell. For the first time he saw that the greatest treasure of his whole life had grown beyond 83 him; that there were needs and ideals in her existence of which he had but the faintest inkling, and that in her way she was as much of a “dude” as the man she had mentioned.
He was encountering the seemingly cruel fate of parents who glorify their children by their own immolation, and who watch those same children pass up and out of their humble range of vision and understanding nevermore to return. Henceforth he could never see his daughter without feeling his own lack of polish.
Such a moment of realization is bitter on both sides, but especially for the one who has given all and can receive less in return than he had before the giving. The iron of this bitterness entered into Beef Bissell’s soul as he stood there, silent, on the low, rickety veranda under the starlight of the plains.
With the queer vagary of a mind at great tension, his senses became particularly acute for a single moment. He saw the silver-pierced vault of the sky, smelled the fragrance of the plains borne on the gentle wind, and heard the rustle of the dappled cottonwoods and the howling of the distant coyotes.