The color was fading slowly out of her cheeks; her lips grew a
little tense, yet in her attitude of suspense and of waiting there was
no longer a suspicion of embarrassment, no trace of fear, and no sign
that a moment was at hand when her confidence was on the ebb. In this
moment Alan did not think of John Graham. It seemed to him that she was
like a child again, the child who had come to him in his cabin, and who
had stood with her back against his cabin door, entreating him to
achieve the impossible; an angel, almost, with her smooth, shining hair,
her clear, beautiful eyes, her white throat which waited with its little
heart-throb for him to beat down the fragile defense which now lay in
the greater power of his own hands. The inequality of it, and the
pitilessness of what had been in his mind to say and do, together with
an inundating sense of his own brute mastery, swept over him, and in
sudden desperation he reached out his hands toward her and cried:
"Mary Standish, in God's name tell me the truth. Tell me why you have
come up here!"
"I have come," she said, looking at him steadily, "because I know that
a man like you, when he loves a woman, will fight for her and protect
her even though he may not possess her."
"But you didn't know that--not until--the cottonwoods!" he protested.
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