"I must finish," he said. "I may never have a chance to say this to you again, and something compels me to tell you of myself, for you are my good angel. In many ways it is of necessity a rough life I lead, but you are always with me, and I am the better for it. I haven't drank a drop since I came to know that I loved you, and we ranchers are not accustomed to that, Florence. But I never will drink as long as I live; for I'll think of you, and I couldn't then if I would. Once you saved me from something worse than drink. There was a man who shot Mr. Rankin and before this, from almost the first thought I can remember, I had sworn that if I ever met him I would kill him. We did meet. I followed him day after day until at last I caught up with him, until he was down and my hands were upon his throat. But I didn't hurt him, Florence, after all; I thought of you just in time."
He was silent, and suddenly the place seemed as still as an empty church. The girl's sobs were almost hysterical. The man's mood changed; he reached over and touched her gently on the shoulder.
"Forgive me for hurting you, Florence," he said. "I—I couldn't help telling you."
Involuntarily the girlish figure straightened.
"Forgive you!" A tear-stained face was looking into his. "Forgive you! I'll never be able to forgive myself! You are a million times too good for me, Ben Blair. Forgive you! I ought never to cease asking you to forgive me!"
"Florence!" pleaded the man. "Florence!"
But the girl, in her turn, went on. "I have felt all the while that certain things I saw here were unreal, that they were not what they seemed. I have prevaricated to you deliberately. I haven't really been here long, but it seems to me now that it's been years. As you said I would, I've looked beneath the surface and seen the sham. At first I wouldn't believe what I saw; but at last I couldn't help believing it, and, oh, it hurt! I never expect to be so hurt again. I couldn't be. One can only feel that way once in one's life." The small form trembled with the memory, and the listener made a motion as if to stop her; but she held him away.
"It isn't that I'm any longer blind; I am acting now with my eyes wide open. It is something else that keeps me from you now, something that crept in while I was learning my lesson, something I can't tell you." Once more the girl could not control herself, and sobbing, trembling, she covered her face. "Ben, Ben," she wailed, "why did you ever let me come here? You could have kept me if you would—you can do—anything. I would have loved you—I did love you all the time; only, only—" She could say no more.
For a second the man did not understand; then like a flash came realization, and he was upon his feet pacing up and down the narrow room. To lose an object one cares for most is one thing; to have it filched by another is something very different. He was elemental, this man from the plains, and in some phases very illogical. The ways of the higher civilization, where man loves many times, where he dines and wines in good fellowship with him who is the husband of a former love—these were not his ways. White anger was in his heart, not against the woman, but against that other man. His fingers itched to be at his throat, regardless of custom or law. Temporarily, the rights and wishes of the woman, the prize of contention, were forgotten. Two young bucks in the forest do not consider the feelings of the doe that is the reward of the victor in the contest when they meet; and Ben Blair was very like these wild things. Only by an effort of the will could he keep from going immediately to find that other man,—intuition made it unnecessary to ask his name. As it was, he wanted now to be away. The tiny room seemed all at once stifling. He wanted to be out of doors where the sun shone, out where he could think. He seized his hat, then suddenly remembered, paused to glance—and that instant was his undoing, and another man's—Clarence Sidwell's—salvation.
And Florence Baker, at whom he had glanced? She was not tearful or hysterical now. Instead, she was looking at him out of wide-open eyes. Well she knew this man, and knew the volcano she had aroused.