His face grew hard under this cool reasoning.

“Am I to understand that you are marrying me as a second choice, and so that you can forget some other man?”

“Couldn’t you leave a girl a secret if she had one?  Couldn’t you be happier if you did?  Couldn’t you take your chance and see if there’s anything under the notion about more than one man and more than one woman in the world?  Love?  Why, what is love?  Something to marry on?  They say it passes.  They tell me that marriage is more adjustable, means more interests than love; that the woman who marries with her eyes open is apt to be the happiest in the long run.  Well, then you said you wanted me on any terms.  Does not that include open eyes?”

“You’re making a hard bargain—­the hardest a man can be obliged to take.”

“It was not of my seeking.”

“You said you loved me—­at first.”

“No.  Only a girl’s in love with love—­at first.  I’ve not really lied to you.  I’m trying to be honest before marriage.  Don’t fear I’ll not be afterward.  There’s much in that, don’t you think?  Maybe there’s something, too, in a woman’s ability to adjust and compromise?  I don’t know.  We ought to be as happy as the average married couple, don’t you think?  None of them are happy for so very long, they say.  They say love doesn’t last long.  I hope not.  One thing, I believe marriage is easier to beat than love is.”

“How old are you, really, Molly?”

“I am just over nineteen, sir.”

“You are wise for that; you are old.”

“Yes—­since we started for Oregon.”

He sat in sullen silence for a long time, all the venom of his nature gathering, all his savage jealousy.

“You mean since you met that renegade, traitor and thief, Will Banion!  Tell me, isn’t that it?”

“Yes, that’s true.  I’m older now.  I know more.”

“And you’ll marry me without love.  You love him without marriage?  Is that it?”

“I’ll never marry a thief.”

“But you love one?”

“I thought I loved you.”

“But you do love him, that man!”

Now at last she turned to him, gazing straight through the mist of her tears.

“Sam, if you really loved me, would you ask that?  Wouldn’t you just try to be so gentle and good that there’d no longer be any place in my heart for any other sort of love, so I’d learn to think that our love was the only sort in the world?  Wouldn’t you take your chance and make good on it, believing that it must be in nature that a woman can love more than one man, or love men in more than one way?  Isn’t marriage broader and with more chance for both?  If you love me and not just yourself alone, can’t you take your chance as I am taking mine?  And after all, doesn’t a woman give the odds?  If you do love, me—­”

“If I do, then my business is to try to make you forget Will Banion.”

“There is no other way you could.  He may die.  I promise you I’ll never see him after I’m married.