that belonged to the flood and flow of generations
of Indian life, yet controlled in her by the order and understanding of
centuries of white men's lives, the pervasive, dominating power of race.

For an instant she kept her eyes towards the window. The storm had
suddenly ceased, and a glimmer of sunset light was breaking over the
distant wastes of snow.

"You want to pay a debt you think you owe," she said, in a strange,
lustreless voice, turning to him at last. "Well, you have paid it. You
have given me a book to read which I will keep always. And I give you a
receipt in full for your debt."

"I don't know about any book," he answered dazedly. "I want to marry you
right away."

"I am sorry, but it is not necessary," she replied suggestively. Her
face was very pale now.

"But I want to. It ain't a debt. That was only a way of putting it. I
want to make you my wife. I got some position, and I can make the West
sit up, and look at you and be glad."

Suddenly her anger flared out, low and vivid and fierce, but her words
were slow and measured. "There is no reason why I should marry you--not
one. You offer me marriage as a prince might give a penny to a beggar.
If my mother were not an Indian woman, you would not have taken it all
as a matter of course. But my father was a white man, and I am a white
man's daughter, and I would rather marry an Indian, who would think me
the best thing there was in the light of the sun, than marry you. Had I
been pure white you would not have been so sure, you would have asked,
not offered. I am not obliged to you. You ought to go to no woman as
you came to me. See, the storm has stopped. You will be quite safe going
back now. The snow will be deep, perhaps, but it is not far."

She went to the window, got his cap and gloves, and handed them to him.
He took them, dumbfounded and overcome.

"Say, I ain't done it right, mebbe, but I meant well, and I'd be good to
you and proud of you, and I'd love you better than anything I ever saw,"
he said shamefacedly, but eagerly and honestly too.

"Ah, you should have said those last words first," she answered.

"I say them now."

"They come too late; but they would have been too late in any case," she
added. "Still, I am glad you said them."

She opened the door for him.

"I made a mistake," he urged humbly. "I understand better now. I never
had any schoolin'."

"Oh, it isn't that," she answered gently. "Goodbye."

Suddenly he turned