“Well, I don’t know that I blame you so much, for I certainly bluffed it pretty well. I can forgive you for that but not for meaning to make me out a strumpet and send me to the muck heap, disgraced for the rest of my life. Well, come along. Let us go straight to Gregory and let him decide.”
Ora did not move.
“It’s either that or you go back to Butte with me tonight and start for Europe tomorrow morning.”
“I know when I am beaten. I will leave. And don’t imagine that you have won because you are in the right. We have emerged from the dark ages of superstition, and we know that the wicked are not punished if they are strong enough. Nor are the virtuous rewarded for mere virtue—not once in ten thousand times. You have won because you are stronger than I. That is all.”
“It’s enough for me.”
Ora laughed. “Do you really believe that you can win him back? He’ll not forget me, because I can always fire his imagination. He is as indifferent to you as only a man can be when the woman is an old story.”
“That was a nasty one! But I’m not worrying. I have been at a disadvantage since I got back, thinking my only rival was a hole in the ground. But take this from me, Ora: when a woman knows where she stands, and has the inside track, and has her nerve with her, the man has no show whatever. Nor the other woman. I’ll get him back all right. And he’ll forget you. That’s a man’s long suit.”
“We’ll neither of us ever know, so it doesn’t matter. I shall never see him again. That is all that matters to me.”
“And Valdobia?”
“I shall marry him. I suppose—after a while.”