What was this doubt at her heart? The unexplained emotion in her voice moved him profoundly. He cautiously approached. "Of course, we know Frank Congdon—he likes to 'string' us Easterners and we take his yarns with due discount. I suppose Captain Haney, like many other Western men, is ready to try his luck now and again, and in that sense really is a gambler."
She faced him squarely. "No, he has been the real thing. He kept a saloon—when I first knew him, but he gave it all up for me. I wouldn't promise to marry him till he did. Everybody out there knows his career, and most people think he got his money underhand, but he tells me he didn't, and I take his word. Every dollar he spends on me or on our home comes out of some mines he owns. I told him I wouldn't touch a dollar of the saloon money—and I won't. Some folks think I don't care, but I do. I don't like the saloon business, and he got out and he's livin' straight now, as straight as any man. It's pretty hard on him, too, though he won't admit it. He must get awful sick of sittin' round the way he does. I tell him he needn't cut out all his old cronies on my account. He says he ain't sufferin', but it's like shuttin' a bronco up in the corral and lettin' the herd go back into the hills."
"Perhaps he thinks you're better fun than any of his cronies."
She ignored the implied compliment and went on:
"All the same, it's drawin' mighty close lines on him. You can't take a man living a free-and-easy life the way he was and wing him all at once and tie him down to a chair without seein' some suffering. Don't you know it?"
"Does he complain?"
"Not a whimper. Sometimes I wish he would. No, he just waits—but I'm afraid he'll get lonesome some day and break loose and go back to the game."
In this way the sculptor had come very close to her secret, and she was trembling to deeper confidence, when he said, very gently: "Of course, it does seem a little strange to me that one so young and charming as you are should be married to a man of his type, but I suppose he was a handsome figure before his—accident."
Her eyes glowed. "He was one of the grandest-looking men! I never liked his trade—and I mistrusted him, at first; but when he cut himself out of the whole business—for me—I couldn't help likin' him; he was so big-hearted and free-handed. We needed his help, all right. Mother was sick, and my brother's ranch was playing to hard luck. But don't think I married him for his money—I liked him then, and, besides—well, I thought I was doing the right thing—but now—well, I'm guessing." She ended abruptly, and in the tremor of that final word Moss read her secret. She had never loved her husband. Pity and a kind of loyalty to her word had carried her to his side, and now a sense of duty bound her there.
With sincere sympathy, he said: "We all do wrong at times that good may come out of it. You could not foresee the future—the best of us can only guess at the effect of any action. You did the best you knew at the moment. The question you have to face now has only slight relation to the past. No one can enter wholly into another's perplexity—I'm not even sure of a single one of my inferences—but if you are thinking of—separation, I would say, meet this crisis as bravely as you met the other. But I don't believe we should decide any such question selfishly. I am not of those who always seek the side on which lies personal happiness, because a happiness that is essentially selfish won't last. The Captain lives only for you—any one can see that. What he does for you springs from deep affection. What would happen to him—if you left him?"