nd her a lost baby
and gave her a home. A woman owes more to herself than to any one."

"Oh, that's true, Wilson. I've thought it all.... But you're
unjust--hard. You make no allowance for--for some possible good in every
one. Dad swears I can reform Jack. Maybe I can. I'll pray for it."

"Reform Jack Belllounds! How can you save a bad egg? That damned coward!
Didn't he prove to you what he was when he jumped on me and kicked my
broken foot till I fainted?... What do you want?"

"Don't say any more--please," cried Columbine. "Oh, I'm so sorry.... I
oughtn't have come.... Ben, take me home."

"But, Collie, I love you," frantically urged Wilson. "And he--he may
love you--but he's--Collie--he's been--"

Here Moore seemed to bite his tongue, to hold back speech, to fight
something terrible and desperate and cowardly in himself.

Columbine heard only his impassioned declaration of love, and to that
she vibrated.

"You speak as if this was one--sided," she burst out, as once more the
gush of hot blood surged over her. "You don't love me any more than I
love you. Not as much, for I'm a woman!... I love with all my heart
and soul!"

Moore fell back upon the bed, spent and overcome.

"Wade, my friend, for God's sake do something," he whispered, appealing
to the hunter as if in a last hope. "Tell Collie what it'll mean for her
to marry Belllounds. If that doesn't change her, then tell her what
it'll mean to me. I'll never go home. I'll never leave here. If she
hadn't told me she loved me then, I might have stood anything. But now I
can't. It'll kill me, Wade."

"Boy, you're talkin' flighty again," replied Wade. "This mornin' when I
come you were dreamin' an' talkin'--clean out of your head.... Well,
now, you an' Collie listen. You're right an' she's right. I reckon I
never run across a deal with two people fixed just like you. But that
doesn't hinder me from feelin' the same about it as I'd feel about
somethin' I was used to."

He paused, and, gently releasing Columbine, he went to Moore, and retied
his loosened bandage, and spread out the disarranged blankets. Then he
sat down on the edge of the bed and bent over a little, running a
roughened hand through the scant hair that had begun to silver upon his
head. Presently he looked up, and from that sallow face, with its lines
and furrows, and from the deep, inscrutable eyes, there fell a light
which, however sad and wise in its infinite understanding of pain and
stri