"I didn't realize the disadvantage you would be under, I didn't know what I expected of you when I urged you into this. Meeting that desperate man with a rope instead of a gun!"
"You didn't know I was going to meet him with a rope," he said.
He stood before her, hat in hand, wholesomely honest in his homely ruggedness, a flush of embarrassment tinging his face. The sun in his short hair seemed laughing, picking out little flecks of gold as mica flakes in the sea waves turn and flash.
"You might have been killed! When I saw him throw his hand to his gun! Oh! it was terrible!"
"So you're the editor now?" he said, cheerfully, trying to turn her from this disturbing subject.
"My heart jumped clear out of my mouth when you threw your rope!"
"It came over and helped me," he said, in manner sincere and grave.
A little flame of color lifted in her pale cheek. She looked at the dusty road, her hand pressed to her bosom as if to make certain that the truant heart had come back to her like a dove to its cote out of the storm. She looked up presently, and smiled a bit; looked down again, the hot blood writing a confession in her face.
"I hope it did," she said.
Morgan felt himself in such a suffocation of strange delight he could find no word that seemed the right word, and left it to silence, which, perhaps was best. He looked at the road, also, as if he would search with her there for grains of gold, or for lost hearts which leap out of maidens' breasts, in the white dust marked by many feet.