Ann Lytton, complicated in her manner of thought by the life she had lived, hampered by conventions, by preconceived standards of conduct, would not let herself be whiffed about so wholly by emotion. It was as though she braced backward and moved reluctantly before a high wind, urged to flight, resisting the tugging by all the strength of her limbs, yet losing control with every reluctant step. For her, also, Bruce Bayard was the most wonderful human being that she had ever experienced. His roughness, his little uncouth touches, did not jar on her highly sensitized appreciation of proprieties. With another individual of a weaker or less cleanly type, the slips in grammar, even, would have been annoying; but his virility and his unsmirched manner of thought, his robust, clean body, overbalanced those shortcomings and, deep in her heart, she idolized him. And yet she would not go further, would not willingly let that emotion come into the light where it could thrive and grow with the days; she tried to repress it, keeping it from its natural sources of nourishment and thereby its growth—for it would grow in spite of her—became a disrupting progress. One part of her, the real, natural, unhampered Ann, told her that for his embraces, for his companionship, she would sell her chances of eternity; she had no desire to own him, no urge to subject herself to him; the status she wanted was equal footing, a shoulder-to-shoulder relationship that would be a joyous thing. And yet that other part, that Puritanical Ann, resisted, fought down this urge, told her that she must not, could not want Bayard because, at the Circle A ranch, waited another man who, in the eyes of the law, of other people, of her God, even, was the one who owned her loyalty and devotion even though he could not claim her love. Strange the ways of women who will guard so zealously their bodies but who will struggle against every natural, holy influence to give so recklessly, so uselessly, so hopelessly, of their souls!
Nora was the quicker to analyze her companion-rival. Her subjection to Bayard's every whim was so complete that, when he told her to be kind to this other woman, she obeyed with all the heart she could muster, in spite of what she read in his face and in Ann's blue eyes when that latter-day part of the eastern woman dreamed through them. She went about her task doggedly, methodically, forcing herself to nurse the bond between these two, thinking not of the future, of what it meant to her own relationships with the cattleman, of nothing but the fact that Bayard, the lover of her dreams, had willed it. The girl was a religious fanatic; her religion was that of service to Bayard and she tortured herself in the name of that belief.
And in that she was only reflecting the spirit of the man she loved. Back at the ranch, Bayard underwent the same ordeal of repressing his natural desires, only, in his case, he could not at all times control his revulsion for Lytton, while Nora kept her jealousy well in hand. As at first, he centered his whole activity about bringing Lytton back to some semblance of manhood. He nursed him, humored him as much as he could, watched him constantly to see that the man did not slip away, go to Yavapai and there, in an hour, undo all that Bruce had accomplished.
Lytton regained strength slowly. His nervous system, racked and torn by his relentless dissipation, would not allow his body to mend rapidly. He had been on the verge of acute alcoholism; another day or two of continued debauchery would have left him a bundle of uncontrollable nerves, and remedying the condition was no one day task. A fortnight passed before Lytton was able to sit up through the entire day and, even then, a walk of a hundred yards would bring him back pale and panting.
Meager as his daily improvement was, nevertheless it was progress, and the rehabilitation of his strength meant only one thing for Bruce Bayard. It meant that Lytton, within a short time, must know of Ann's presence, must go to her, and that, thereafter, Bayard would be excluded from the woman's presence, for he still felt that to see them together would strip him of self-restraint, would make him a primitive man, battling blindly for the woman he desired.
As the days passed and Bruce saw Lytton steadying, gaining physical and mental force, his composure, already disturbed, was badly shaken. He tried to tell himself that what must be, must be; that brooding would help matters not at all, that he must keep up his courage and surrender gracefully for the sake of the woman he loved, keeping her peace of mind sacred. At other times, he went over the doctrine of unimpeachable motive, of individual duty that the clergyman had expounded, but some inherent reluctance to adopt the new, some latent conservatism in him rebelled at thought of man's crossing man where a woman was at stake. He did not know, but he formed the third being who was held to a rigid course by conscience! Of the four entangled by this situation, Ned Lytton alone was without scruples, without a code of ethics.
Between the two men was the same attitude that had prevailed from the first. Bayard kept Lytton in restraint by his physical and mental dominance. He gave up attempting to persuade, attempting to appeal to the spark of manhood left in his patient, after that day when Lytton stole and drank the whiskey. He relied entirely on his superiority and frankly kept his charge in subjection. When strength came back to the debauched body, Bayard told himself, he could begin to plead, to argue for his results; not before.
For the greater portion of the time Lytton was morose, quarrelsome. Now and again came flashes of a better nature, but invariably they were followed by spiteful, reasonless outbursts and remonstrances. To these Bayard listened with tolerance, accepting the other man's curses and insults as he would the reasonless pet of a child, and each time that Ned showed a desire to act as a normal human being, to interest himself in life or the things about him, the big rancher was on the alert to give information, to encourage thought that would take the sick man's mind from his own difficulties.
One factor of the life at the ranch evidently worried Lytton, but of it he did not speak. This was the manner with which Bayard kept one room, the room in which he slept, to himself. The door through which he entered never stood open, Lytton was never asked to cross the sill. Bayard never referred to it in conversation. A secret chamber, it was, rendered mysterious by the fact that its occupant took pains that it should never be mentioned. Lytton instinctively respected this attitude and never asked a question touching on it, though at times his annoyance at being so completely excluded from a portion of the house was evident.
Once Lytton, sitting in the shade of the ash tree, watched Bayard riding in from the valley on his sorrel horse. The animal nickered as his master let him head for the well beside the house.