“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 was till their lips met—­and long then.  But he heard her whisper “Good-by,” saw her frank tears, felt her slowly, a little by a little, draw away from him.

“Good-by,” she said.  “Good-by.  I would not dare, any more, ever again.  Oh, Will Banion, why did you take away my heart?  I had but one!”

“It is mine!” he cried savagely.  “No other man in all the world shall ever have it!  Molly!”

But she now was gone.

He did not know how long he stood alone, his head bowed on his saddle.  The raucous howl of a great gray wolf near by spelled out the lonesome tragedy of his future life for him.

Quaint and sweet philosopher, and bold as she but now had been in one great and final imparting of her real self, Molly Wingate was only a wet, weary and bedraggled maid when at length she entered the desolate encampment which stood for home.  She found her mother sitting on a box under a crude awning, and cast herself on her knees, her head on that ample bosom that she had known as haven in her childhood.  She wept now like a little child.

“It’s bad!” said stout Mrs. Wingate, not knowing.  “But you’re back and alive.  It looks like we’re wrecked and everything lost, and we come nigh about getting all burned up, but you’re back alive to your ma!  Now, now!”

That night Molly turned on a sodden pallet which she had made down beside her mother in the great wagon.  But she slept ill.  Over and over to her lips rose the same question: 

“Oh, Will Banion, Will Banion, why did you take away my heart?”

CHAPTER XV

THE DIVISION