“My God,” he said again—elemental words wrung by elemental anguish.
A cry, low and terrible, penetrated his misery. Marjorie flung herself at his feet, and gasped,
“No—no—not that, Raymond . . . Are you listening to me? Not that!”
“What, then?” he muttered.
“Oh, how could you, Raymond? You couldn’t think I would do a thing like that?”
“Then what do you mean?”
The story of her association with the Hon. Member for Morroway fell in broken sentences, often misleading, by reason of the very shame she felt in its avowal. As he listened to the innocent little tale, Dilling’s heart was torn with pity, and more clearly than before he saw the futility of attempting to mould their simplicity to the form of conduct required by their position. He thought of the West—his West—of a rugged people who were still alive to the practical advancement of idealism, divorced from stultifying subservience to convention. He felt an overpowering urge to return, to identify himself once again with those sturdy people, whom, he believed, would answer the guidance of his hand. He was theirs. They were his. The West was his kingdom, and there he would be content to reign.
A crushing weight seemed lifted from his spirit. Shackles fell away.
“Would you like to go home,” he asked Marjorie, “to go home for good and all, I mean?”
The light in her face answered him. It is abundantly true that experiences realised, are a glorified incarnation of dead wishes. The promised return to Pinto Plains was, for Marjorie, a dream that was coming true. She knew the exquisite pain of seeing the complete fulfilment of a passionate desire. No words could translate her feeling.