She dropped her hands until they met before her and a look of offended trust, came into her face, settling the lines about her mouth into an expression of determination.
"But why?" she asked him. "Why should you lie to me and keep me from Ned, my husband? I trusted you; I believed what you said. Why was it, Mr. Bayard?"
He turned on her, eyes burning, color running from his face.
"I'll tell you why, ma'am," he said, chokingly, as though his lungs were too full of air. "I'll tell you: It's because I didn't dare trust myself under th' same roof with you, that's why; it's because I know that if you're around me you'll be ... you'll be in danger."
"No man should tempt himself too far an' 'twould be temptin', if I was to let you come there. You don't know this country. You don't know us men ... men like I am. I don't know your kind of men myself; but we're rough, we're not nice when we want a thing. We haven't got nice manners. I tell you, ma'am, I want to help you all I can, but I've got to look out for myself, you see! Do you see that, ma'am? I thought I could see you now an' then safe enough, but I can't I guess.... This had to come out; it had to!"
A forearm half raised she stepped back from him, settling her weight to one foot. He breathed heavily twice to relieve the congestion that strained his voice.
"When I stood down there th' other night,"—gesturing toward the entrance of the hotel—"an' looked into the darkness an' saw your face there, it was like an angel ... or somethin'. It caught me in th' throat, it made my knees shake—an' they've never shook from fear or anythin' else in my life. When we set in that next room washin' out that wound, bindin' it up, I didn't give a damn if that man lived or died—"
"Oh!" she cried, and drew away another step, but he followed close, bound that she should hear, should understand.
"—If he lived or died," he repeated. "I wanted to be near you, to watch your fingers, to see th' move of your shoulders, to look at th'—th' pink of your neck through your waist, to see your lips an' your eyes an' your hair ... ma'am. I didn't give a damn about that man. It was you; your strangeness, your nerve, your sand, I wanted to see, to know about ... an' your looks. Then you said, you said he was your husband an' for a minute I wanted him to die, I did! That was a black minute, ma'am; things went round, I didn't know what was happenin'. Then, I come out of it and I realized; realized what kind of a woman you are, if you'd come clear from th' East on th' trail of a ... a ... your husband, an' speak of him as a cripple an' be as ... as wrought up over him as you was—
"I thought then, like a fool I was, that I'd be doin' somethin' fine if I took that ... that ... your husband an' made a man of him an' sent him back to you, a man!"