Anger mounted in Fult's voice as he replied: "But I done hit all for you!"
"No, you didn't, you did it for your own sake, to gratify your vanity, I suppose. The very fact you could do it shows you cared nothing for me. Real love doesn't deceive and play-act. And I'm glad I found out what you had done, because I had believed that you really were suffering, and it is a great relief to me to know that you were not, and that in reality you care nothing more for me than I do for you."
"But I do love you," cried Fult, furiously; "and you love me, too; you have to, when you're going to be my wife by sun-up!"
"Maybe I'm going to be your wife by sun-up,—maybe I can't help myself,—but if I am, it will be with anything but love in my heart."
Fult stopped in his tracks. "I won't hear you say that!" he cried, threateningly.
"I not only do not love you, but I do love another man," continued Isabel, standing straight and unabashed before him. "I found it out to-night—it all came over me like a flood when I believed I had lost him forever."
"Hit's a lie!" he exclaimed, savagely.
"It's the truth," she said, tensely. "It's someone I have known always; he lived on the next place to ours, we grew up together, he is as much a part of my life as breathing; but because I knew him so well, and believed love to be something strange, unknown, romantic, I didn't realize it was love I felt for him. I found it out to-night on this ride, when I wanted him above all things in the universe. He's not so picturesque or handsome as you are; but he's good, he's unselfish, he's true—he'd die rather than deceive anybody, or treat a girl as you have been willing to treat Lethie. And he's mine. And it was the thought of him, even more than of her, that broke my heart to-night."
Seizing Isabel by the shoulders, Fult shook her with such violence that all her joints seemed loosened. "Hush!" he commanded. "Don't drive me too far; I don't want to kill you!"
"I'm not at all afraid that you will," she replied. "That wouldn't mend matters."