rong for you to have
deceived me about yourself--what you really were--when you were in the
Army. I could maybe forgive you up to that far, for you did--for men
are--well, men. But about that other--you knew all the time we
couldn't--couldn't ever--I'd never marry a thief."

The great and wistful regret of her voice was a thing not to be escaped.
She stood, a very splendid figure, clean and marvelous of heart as she
was begrimed and bedraggled of body now, her great vital force not
abated by what she had gone through. She spread her hands just apart and
looked at him in what she herself felt was to be the last meeting of
their lives; in which she could afford to reveal all her soul for once
to a man, and then go about a woman's business of living a life fed on
the husks of love given her by some other man.

He knew that he had seen one more miracle. But, chastened now, he could,
he must, keep down his own eager arms. He heard her speak once more, her
voice like some melancholy bell of vespers of a golden evening.

"Oh, Will Banion, how could you take away a girl's heart and leave her
miserable all her life?"

The cry literally broke from her. It seemed in her own ears the sudden
voice of some other woman speaking--some unaccountable, strange woman
whom she never had seen or known in all her life.

"Your--heart?" he whispered, now close to her in the dusk. "You were
not--you did not--you--"

But he choked. She nodded, not brazenly or crudely or coarsely, not even
bravely, but in utter simplicity. For the time she was wholly free of
woman coquetry. It was as though the elements had left her also
elemental. Her words now were of the earth, the air, the fire, the
floods of life.

"Yes," she said, "I will tell you now, because of what you have done for
me. If you gave me life, why shouldn't I give you love--if so I could?"

"Love? Give me love?"

"Yes! I believe I was going to love you, until now, although I had
promised him--you know--Captain Woodhull. Oh, you see, I understand a
little of what it was to you--what made you--" She spoke disconnectedly.
"I believe--I believe I'd not have cared. I believe I could follow a man
to the gallows. Now I will not, because you didn't tell me you were a
thief. I can't trust you. But I'll kiss you once for good-by. I'm sorry.
I'm so sorry."

Being a man, he never fathomed her mind at all. But being a man, slowly,
gently, he took her in his arms, drew her tight. Long, long it