"I can, of course; but I don't like to have you leave like this. You must be half-dead, and I—Jack, Jack, what would I have done without you!"
He was so close, in the darkness, that in throwing out her hand it touched his face, one of the trivial accidents that turn lives sometimes. He caught it, pressing it to his lips, his eyes, his cheek.
"Don't speak like that, unless you want to make a crazy man of me," he muttered. "I can't stand everything. God! girl, you'll never know, and I—can't tell you! For Christ sake, don't act as if you were afraid—the only one who has ever had faith in me! I think that would wake up all the devil you helped put asleep once. Here! give me your hand again, just once—just to show you trust me. I'll be worth it—I swear I will! I'll never come near you again!"
The bonds under which he had held himself so long had broken at the touch of her hand and the impulsive tenderness of her appeal. Through the half sob in his wild words had burst all the repressed emotions of desolate days and lonely nights, and the force of them thrilled the girl, half-stunned her, for she could not speak. A sort of terror of his broken, passionate speech had drawn her quickly back from him, and she seemed to live hours in that second of indecision. All her audacity and self-possession vanished as a bulwark of straws before a flood. Her hands trembled, and a great compassion filled her for this alien by whose side she would have to stand against the world. That certainty it must have been that decided her, as it has decided many another woman, and ennobled many a love that otherwise would have been commonplace. And though her hands trembled, they trembled out toward him, and fell softly as a benediction on his upturned face.
"I think you will come to me again," she said tremulously, as she leaned low from the saddle and felt tears as well as kisses on her hands, "and you are worth it now, I believe; worth more than I can give you."
A half-hour later Rachel entered the door of the ranch, and found several of its occupants sleepless and awaiting some tidings of her. In the soft snow they had not heard her arrival until she stepped on the porch.
"I've been all night getting here," she said, glancing at the clock that told an hour near dawn, "and I'm too tired to talk; so don't bother me. See how hoarse I am. No; Kalitan did not bring me. It was a Kootenai called Lamonti. I don't know where he has gone—wouldn't come in. Just keep quiet and let me get to bed, will you?"