"You think time will cure a love like that?" he said.
"Yes, yes!"
"That's all you know about it. Time may act that way perhaps in cities and such places, but out in the hills it is different. When you've got the breath of the forest in you, I say it is different. Time—why, I've lived fifteen years in the open with a living memory. Every night I've dreamed it over, every day I've lived it through; in every camp-fire I see a face, and every wind from the south brings a voice to me. Every stormy night a girl with eyes like Necia's calls to me, and I have to follow. Every patch of moonlight shows her smiling at me, just beyond, just in the shadow's edge. Love! Time! Why, Alluna, love is the only thing in the world that never dies, and time only makes it the more enduring."
He took up the white slouch hat he had thrown down when he came in, and stepped to the door.
"Where are you going?" inquired the squaw, fearfully.
"To the barracks to give myself up!"
She flung herself at him with a great cry, and seized him about the waist.
"You never loved me, John, but I have been a good woman to you, although I knew you were always thinking of her—and had no thought of me. I have loved this girl because you loved her. I have hated your enemies because you hated them, and now I remember while you forget."
"Forget! What do you mean?"
"Stark!"