"It is only the truth. It sounded fearfully hard to me when you told me that woman was your friend--that you knew her before you knew me and would know her after I was dead; that she was as good as I, and that if I didn't entertain her you would. But it was the truth; you told me the truth, and it was better that you told it--as it is better now that I tell it to you."
"I was drunk. I didn't tell you the truth. A man is a pretty tough animal sometimes, but you are a woman and a pure one, and I care more for you than for all the other women in the world, and it is not your nature to be unforgiving."
He looked suddenly up at her and spoke sharply: "Marion, I know why you won't go."
"No; you have not honestly told me. The real reason is Gordon Smith."
"If he were I should not hesitate to tell you, Murray, but he is not," she said coldly.
Sinclair spoke harshly: "Do you think you can fool me? Don't you suppose I know he spends his time loafing around your shop?"
Marion flushed indignantly. "It is not true!"
"Don't you suppose I know he writes letters back to Wisconsin to your folks?"
"What have I to do with that? Why shouldn't he write to my mother? Who has a better right?"
"Don't drive me too far. By God! if I go away alone I'll never leave you here to run off with Whispering Smith--remember that!" She sat in silence. His rage left her perfectly quiet, and her unmoved expression shamed and in part silenced him. "Don't drive me too far," he muttered sullenly. "If you do you will be responsible, Marion."
She did not move her eyes from the blue hills on the horizon. "I expect you to kill me sometime; I feel sure you will. And that you may do." Then she bent her look on him. "You may do it now if you want to."
His face turned heavy with rage. "Marion," he cried, with an oath, "do you know how close you are to death at this moment?"
He clinched the bench-rail and rose slowly to his feet. Marion sat motionless in the hickory chair; the sun was shining in her face and her hands were folded in her lap. Dicksie rocked on the porch. In the shadow of the house the man was mending the saddle.
At the end of a long and neglected hall on the second floor of the old bank block in Hill Street, Whispering Smith had a room in which he made headquarters at Medicine Bend; it was in effect Whispering Smith's home. A man's room is usually a forlorn affair in spite of any effort to make it home-like. If he neglects his room it looks barren, and if he ornaments it it looks fussy. Boys can do something with a den because they are not yet men, and some tincture of woman's nature still clings to a boy. Girls are born to the deftness that is to become all theirs in the touch of a woman's hand; but men, if they walk alone, pay the penalty of loneliness.