"He's pretty far gone, ma'am, your husband. He ain't got a whole lot of strength, an' it takes strength to show will power. We might keep him away from drinkin' by watching him all the time, but that wouldn't do much good; that wouldn't be a cure; it would only be delay, and wasting our time and foolin' ourselves. He'd ought to be took away from it, a long ways away from it."
"That's what I've thought. Couldn't I take him out to the mine—"
"His mine is most forty miles from here, ma'am."
"So much the better, isn't it? We'd be away from all this. I could keep him there, I know."
Bayard regarded her critically until her eyes fell before his.
"You might keep him there, and you might not. I judge you didn't have much control over him in th' East. You didn't seem to have a great deal of influence with him by letter,"—gently, very kindly, yet impressively. "If you got out in camp all alone with him, livin' a life that's new to you, you might not make good there. See what I mean? You'd be all alone, cause the mine's abandoned." She started at that. "There'd be nobody to help you if he got crazy wild like he'll sure get before he comes through. You—"
"You don't think I'm up to it? Is that it?" she interrupted.
He looked closely at her before he answered.
"Ma'am, if a woman like you can't keep a man straight by just lovin' him,"—with a curious flatness in his voice—"you can't do it no way, can you?"
She sat silent, and he continued to question her with his gaze.