"You don't want her yourself. You don't want anybody else to have her. Is that it?"
"Didn't I say that those were two different—"
"You want to look out, Neighbor!" Bayard said, with a smile, dropping the forelegs of his chair to the floor and leaning his elbows on the table. "You're talking one thing and meaning another. You want to keep your head, if you want to keep your wife. Don't make out you want to let go when you really want to hang on. Women are funny things. They'll stick to men like a burr, they'll take abuse an' suffer and give no sign of quittin', because they want love, gentleness, and they hate to give up thinkin' they'll get it from the man they'd planned would give it to 'em.
"But some day, while they're stickin' to a man who don't appreciate 'em, they'll see happiness goin' by ... then, they're likely to get it. And sometime that's goin' to happen to your wife; she'll see happiness somewhere else an' she'll go after it; then, she won't be around your neck, but somebody else'll have her!
"Oh, they're queer things ... funny things! You can't tell where th' man's comin' from that'll meet 'em an' take their heart an' their head. He may be right near 'em all th' time an' they never wake up to it for years; he may come along casual-like, not lookin' for anything, an' see 'em just by chance an' open his heart an' take 'em....
"Once I was in th' Club in Prescott an' I heard a mining engineer from th' East sing a song about some man who lived on th' desert.
"'From th' desert I come to thee,'
"it went,
"'On a stallion shod with fire....'
"An' then he goes on with th' finest love song you ever heard, endin' up: