And now he did not answer, but looked away from her, and so it was she who made him tell.
“What then?” she said again.
“Would you have liked me then,” he burst out, “before that night?”
She said—and nothing could have swept him like the simplicity and honesty of this:
“But you never come down to town once after that morning on the horse.”
“How did you know that?” he cried.
“I watched,” she answered, quietly.
And yet this, he knew, was before that night on the trail. This was still in the confidence of her supreme confession: “I didn’t know no woman I could tell—nor no other decent man.” And she had watched for him....
But, after all, she was telling him so now! And here, to-night, when she no longer had need of him, her comradeship was unchanged. And there had been those hours on the train from Chicago....