“Don’t I understand?” She smiled at him—a wistful, wan little smile which hurt him more than if she had cried out aloud. “I understand this much: that in all the world I have but Daddy, and that he has been always so good to me, and that you want to take him away from me!
“I understand that you want to kill him because he killed your pardner, and that it won’t do any good for you to kill him; it won’t bring your pardner back to life, it won’t make him rest any easier. I understand that these things are not for men to do, but for God. God sees better than we can see, and clearer and deeper down into our hearts. And He would not do what you are going to do. He would not take my Daddy away from me.”
When he made no answer, finding no answer to make, she stood silent a little, letting her head sink forward despairingly. And then, again lifting her eyes to his, her lips, her chin quivering as she strove to make her faltering voice firm:
“Don’t you see that you will make it seem almost as if I had killed him, myself? For if I had not brought you to the cabin you would never have found it, maybe. If I had not thought you were a friend and brought you there, maybe you would not have lived! Don’t you see?
“Don’t you see?” Again, groaning aloud he had drawn back from her, and she had come to his side once more, had again lain her hand softly upon his arm. “And don’t you see something else? We were growing to be such friends, you and I, Dick Farley. Didn’t I read right the things which you did not say that day you went away, the things which were in your heart? Didn’t you see the things in my heart, too? Didn’t you see?”
He felt her hand tremble pitifully, saw the anguish written upon her young face.
“We were going to be good friends—oh, such good friends! And now”—with a dry sob as she put her face in her two hands and shook from head to foot with the storm in her bosom—“and now you want to end it all, and to kill him!”
For a blind moment he fought hard with the thing which she had thought was friendship. And then, seeing her swaying there, seeing her mute misery, he put out his arms and drew her close to him.
“Friends!” he cried, his voice harsh in her ears, like the voice of a man in anger. “Friends! Can’t you see that I love you—love you as a man can not love his friends—as he can love only the one woman in all the world!”
She lifted her face quickly to his, and through the tears glistening upon her cheeks he could see a new look, a look of gladness and of hope.