To the end, under the dominance of her will, she had not faltered; and with the end she looked up with a faint smile of stoicism and an invincible flame in her eyes. Anything that he might be able to say would be as flashing a blade in and out of a blaze. She had become superior to the resources of barrier or armor, confident of a self whose richness he realized anew. He saw and felt the tempered fineness of her as something that would mind neither siege nor prayer.
"I am not afraid," she said, "and I know that you are not. It is all right!" Then she added, with a desperate coolness, but still clasping the boa rigidly: "The hotel is only a block away, and to-morrow you will be back in the store and I shall soon be on my side of the pass."
This was her right word for a situation when his temples were throbbing, harking back, with time's reversal of conditions, to a situation after the duel in the arroyo was over and he had used the right word when her temples were throbbing and her hands splashed. If retribution were her object, she had repaid in nerve-twitch of torture for nerve-twitch of torture. The picture that had been alive and out of its frame was back on cold canvas. Even the girl he had known across the barrier, even the girl in armor, seemed more kindly. But one can talk, even to a picture in a frame; at least, Jack could, with wistful persistence.
"You don't mind if I tell you again—if I speak my one continuous thought aloud again?" he asked. "Mary, I love you! I love you in such a way that I"—with a faint bravery of humor as he saw danger signals—"I would build mud-houses all day for you to knock to pieces!"
"Foolish business, Jack!" she answered.
"Or drag a plow."
"Very hard work!"
"Or set out to tunnel a mountain single-handed, with hammer and chisel."
"I think you would find it dreadfully monotonous at the end of the first week."
He had spoken his extravagances without winning a glance from her. She had answered with a precision that was more trying than silence.