“Well, as he’s your husband he may prevent me from being kind, but he can’t drive me away.”
“But suppose I ask you to go?”
“If that’s the greatest kindness I can do you—well, I’ll go.... But do you ask me?”
“I—I don’t know. I may be forced to—not by him, but by my pride,” she said, desperately. “Oh, I’m unstrung! I don’t know what to say.... After all, just the sound of a kind voice makes me a coward. O God! if people in the world only knew the value of kindness! I never did know.... This desert of horrors teaches the truth of life.... Once I had the world at my feet!... Now I break and bow at the sympathy of a stranger!”
“Never mind your pride,” said Adam, in his slow, cool way. “I understand. I’ve a good deal of a woman in me. Whatever brought you to Death Valley, whatever nails you here, is nothing to me. Even if I learn it, what need that be to you? If you do not want me to stay to work for you, watch over your husband—why, let me stay for my own sake.”
She rose and faced him, with soul-searching eyes. She could not escape her nature. Emotion governed her.
“Sir, you speak nobly,” she replied, with lips that trembled. “But I don’t understand you. Stay here—where I am—for your sake! Explain, please.”
“I have my burden. Once it was even more terrible than yours. Through that I can feel as you feel now. I have lived the loneliness—the insupportable loneliness—of the desert—the silence, the heat, the hell. But my burden still weighs on my soul. If I might somehow help your husband, who is going wrong, blindly following some road of passion—change him or stop him, why that would ease my burden. If I might save you weariness, or physical pain, or hunger, or thirst, or terror—it would be doing more for myself than for you.... We are in Death Valley. You refuse to leave. We are, right here, two hundred feet below sea level. When the furnace heat comes—when the blasting midnight wind comes—it means either madness or death.”
“Stay—Sir Knight,” she said, with a hollow, ringing gayety. “Who shall say that chivalry is dead?... Stay! and know this. I fear no man. I scorn death.... But, ah, the woman of me! I hate dirt and vermin. I’m afraid of pain. I suffer agonies even before I’m hurt. I miss so unforgettably the luxuries of life. And lastly, I have a mortal terror of going mad. Spare me that and you will have my prayers in this world—and beyond.... Good night.”
“Good night,” replied Adam.