Tug did not try to defend himself. “That’s one way of looking at it. I ought never to have come to the house,” he said with humility.
“I wish you hadn’t. But wishing don’t get us anywhere. Point is, what are we going to do about it?”
“I don’t see anything to do. I’d take the first train out if it would help any,” Hollister replied despondently.
“Don’t you go. I’ll have a talk with her an’ see how she feels first.”
Hollister promised not to leave until he had heard from Reed.
CHAPTER XXXIV
BORN THAT WAY
It was impossible for Betty to escape the emotions that flooded her, but she was the last girl to sit down and accept defeat with folded hands. There was in her a certain vigor of the spirit that craved expression, that held her head up in the face of disaster.
At the Quarter Circle D E she was so briskly businesslike that none of the men would have guessed that she was passing through a crisis. Except for moments of abstraction, she gave no evidence of the waves of emotion that inundated her while she was giving orders about the fencing of the northwest forty or the moving of the pigpens.
When she was alone, it was worse. Her longing for Hollister became acute. If she could see him, talk with him, his point of view would be changed. New arguments marshaled themselves in her mind. It was ridiculous to suppose that a man’s past—one not of his own choosing, but forced on him—could determine his future so greatly as to make happiness impossible. She would not believe it. Every instinct of her virile young personality rebelled against the acceptance of such a law.
Tug’s persistence in renouncing joy had wounded her vanity. But at bottom she did not doubt him. He had stood out because he thought it right, not because he did not love her. In spite of her distress of mind, she was not quite unhappy. A warm hope nestled in her bosom. She loved and was loved. The barrier between them would be torn down. Again they would be fused into that oneness which for a blessed ten minutes had absorbed them.