She was emphatic about the reason for her part. She went out to the arroyo on behalf of her responsibility for a human life.
"But why did you not rouse me? Why did you go alone?" he asked.
"I didn't think—there wasn't time—I was upset and hurried."
She proceeded in a forced monotone which seemed to allow her hardly a single full breath.
"And I am going to kill you!" she repeated, shuddering, at the close of the narrative.
"When he said that did his face change completely? Did it seem like the face of another man? Yes, did it seem as if there were one face that could charm and another that could kill?" Jasper's words came slowly and with a drawn exactness. They formed the inquiry of one who expected corroboration of an impression.
"Yes."
"You felt it—you felt it very definitely, Mary?"
"Yes."
She was living over the moment of Jack's transformation from silk to steel. The scene in the arroyo became burning clear. Under the strain of the suppression of her own excitement, concentrated in her purpose to make all the realism of the duel an absurdity, she did not watch keenly for the signs of expression by which she usually knew what was passing in her father's mind. But she was not too preoccupied to see that he was relieved over her assent that there was a devil in Jack Wingfield, which struck her as a puzzle in keeping with all that morning's experience. It added to the inward demoralization which had suddenly dammed her power of speech.