“Think of what you could do here, how happy we could be here.  Think of what we could do, together.  There isn’t anything I wouldn’t try to do.  Why, I could do anything; and I’d bring everything I got, everything, back to you,—­and set it down at your feet and say, ‘I brought you this.’  What would I care for it, alone?  What does it mean to me?  What glory or success do I want?  Without you, what does all this world, all my life, all I can do, mean to me after this?  I knew long ago I couldn’t be happy, but I didn’t know why, I know now what I wanted, all along.  I can do something in the world, I can succeed, I can be somebody now—­and now I want to, want to!  Oh, I’ve lacked so much, I’ve longed so much.  Some way the world didn’t seem made right.  I wondered, I puzzled, I didn’t know, I couldn’t understand—­I thought all the world was made to be unhappy—­but it isn’t, it’s made for happiness, for joy, for exultation.  Why, I can see it plainly enough now—­all straight out, ahead of me,—­all straight ahead of us two!”

“How like a man you are!” she said slowly.  “You seek your own success, although your path lies over a woman’s disgrace and ruin.”

“Haven’t you ever thought of the other side of this at all?  Can’t a woman ever think of mercy to a man?  Can’t she ever blame herself just for being Eve, for being the incarnate temptation that she is to any real man?  Can’t she see what she is to him?  You talk about ruin—­I tell you it’s ruin here, sure as we are born, for one or both of us.  I reckon maybe it’s for both.”

“Yes, it is for both.”

“No.  I’ll not admit it!” he blazed out.  “If I’ve been strong enough to pull you down, I’m strong enough to carry you up again.  Only, don’t force the worst part of me to the front all the time.”

“A gentle wooer, indeed!  And yet you blame me that I can not see a man’s side in a case like this.”

“But in God’s name, why should a man see any but a man’s side of it?  Things don’t go by reason, after all.  The world goes, I reckon, because there is a man’s side to it.  Anyhow, I am as I am.  Whatever you do here, whatever you are, don’t try to wheedle me, nor ask me to see your side, when there is only one side to this.  If any man ever lifted hand or eye to you, I’d kill him.  I’ll not give up one jot of the right I’ve got in you, little as it is—­I’ve taken the right to hold you here and talk to you.  But when you say you’ll not listen to me, then you do run against my side of it, my man’s side of it; and I tell you once more, I’m the owner of this place.  I live here.  It’s mine.  I rule here, over free and thrall.”

With rude strength and pride he swept an arm widely around him, covering half the circle of the valley.  “It’s mine!” he said slowly.  “Fit for a king, isn’t it?  Yes, fit for a queen.  It is almost fit for you.”

His hat was in his hand.  The breeze of the evening, drawing down the valley, now somewhat chilled, lifted the loose hair on his forehead.  He stood, big, bulky and strong, like some war lord of older days.  The argument on his lips was that of the day of skins and stone.