For a moment she closed her eyes. The sacrifice which she intended was becoming harder, desperately hard to make.
"I'm going to take you back and forgive you," said Cartwright, apparently blind to what was going on in her mind. "I ain't one to carry malice. You keep to the line from now on, and we'll get along fine. But you step crooked just once more, and I'll learn you a pile of things you never even dreamed could happen!"
To her it seemed that he stood in a shaft of consuming light that exposed every shadowy nook and cranny of his nature, and the narrow-minded meanness that she saw, startled her.
"What you do afterward with me is your own affair," she said. "It's about the present that I've come to bargain."
"Bargain?"
"Exactly! Do what I ask, and I go back and act as your wife. If you refuse, I walk out of your life forever."
He could not speak for a moment. Then he exploded.
"It's funny. I could almost laugh hearing you chatter crazy like this. Don't you think I got a right to make my own wife come home with me, now that I've found her? Wouldn't the law stand behind me?"
"You can force me to come," she admitted quietly, "but if you do, I'll let the whole truth be known that I ran away from you. Can your pride stand that, Jude?"
He writhed. "And how'll you get around that, even if I don't make you, and you come back of your own free will?"