r's crimes had made it
impossible for her to accept him upon a basis of equality.

She felt that Lawler would take her upon any terms--indeed, his manner
while in the cabin shortly before convinced her of that; but she did not
want to go to him under those conditions. She would have felt, always,
as though pity for her had influenced him. She felt that she would
always be searching his eyes, looking for signs which would indicate
that he was thinking of her father. And he was certain to think of
him--those thoughts would come in spite of his efforts to forget; they
would be back of every glance he threw at her; they would be lurking
always near, to humiliate her. The conviction sent a shudder over her.

The girl's mental processes were not involved; they went directly,
unwaveringly, to the truth--the truth as her heart revealed it, as she
knew it must be. If there was any subconscious emotion in her heart or
mind from which might spring chaotic impulses that would cloud her
mental vision, she was not aware of it. Her thoughts ran straight and
true to the one outstanding, vivid, and overwhelming fact that she could
not marry Kane Lawler because to marry him would mean added humiliation.

Greatness, Ruth knew, was hedged about by simplicity. Lawler was as
direct in his attitude toward life--and to herself--as she. There was
about him no wavering, no indecision, no mulling over in his mind the
tangled threads of thought that would bring confusion. The steel fiber
of his being was unelastic. He met the big questions of life with an
eagerness to solve them instantly.

He wanted her--she knew. But she assured herself that she could not
bring upon him the shame and ignominy of a relationship with a cattle
thief, no matter how intensely he wanted her. That would be doing him an
injustice, and she would never agree to it.

But it hurt, this knowledge that she could not marry Lawler; that she
must put away from her the happiness that might be hers for the taking;
that she must crush the eager impulses that surged through her; that she
must repulse the one man who could make her heart beat faster; the man
for whom she longed with an intensity that sometimes appalled her.

She got up after a while and lighted an oil-lamp, placing it upon the
table in the big room. She closed the door and then dropped listlessly
into a chair beside the table, her eyes glistening, her lips quivering.

The future was somber in aspect, almost hop