Morgan paused a moment at the threshold, as if reconsidering something. Violet, who had stood leaning her head on her bent arm, weeping that Fred was rushing to throw his life away, lifted her tearful face, reached out and touched his arm.
"Must you go?" she asked.
For reply Morgan put out his hand as if to say farewell. She took it, pressed it a moment to her breast, and ran away, choked on the grief she could not utter. Morgan stepped out into the sun.
Rhetta Thayer stood at the door, a little aside, as if waiting for him, as if knowing he would come. She was agitated by the anxious hope that spoke out of her white face, but restrained by a fear that could not hide in her wide-straining eyes. She moved almost imperceptibly toward him, her lips parted as if to speak, but said nothing.
As Morgan lifted his hand to his hat in grave salute, passing on, she offered him the badge of his office which she had held gripped in her hand. He took it, inclining his head as in acknowledgment of its safe keeping through the night, and hastened on to one of the horses that stood dozing on three legs in the early sun.
As he left her, Rhetta followed a few quick steps, a cry rising in her heart for him to stay a moment, to spare her one word of forgiveness out of his grim, sealed lips. But the cry faltered away to a great, stifling sob, while tears rose hot in her eyes, making him dim in her sight as he threw the rein over the horse's head, starting the animal out of its sleep with a little squatting jump. She stood so, stretching out her hands to him, while he, unbending in his stern answer to the challenge of duty, unseeing in the hard bitterness of his heart, swung into the saddle and rode away.
Rhetta groped for her saddle, blind in her tears. Morgan was hidden by the dust that hung in the quiet morning behind him as she mounted and followed.
Half a mile or so along the road, Fred passed her, bending low as he rode, as if his desire left the saddle and carried him ahead of his horse; a little while, and Stilwell thundered by, leaving her last and alone on that road leading to what adventures her heart shrunk in her bosom to contemplate.
Ahead of her the smoke of Ascalon's destruction rose high.