r way and faced her. "So
you've been trouncing the hide off my back for an hour or more to make
me believe all this doesn't mean renunciation? They splashed their
filthy hogwash on your skirts to foil me; and _that_ was nothing! The
fight was to go on just the same. I was not to stop because of any
injury that came to you. Then, they assassinated your father; and you
know as well as I do he was shot down by that drunken Shanty Town sot
in mistake for me; but the fight is to go on just the same. _That_,
too, is nothing if the cause be won. Now, you take a slice of your
fortune and slam it into the cause, backing me; and you renounce
everything that gives meaning to life for a woman, pretending that
renunciation is a privilege--"

"It is," interrupted Eleanor, "if it weaves the thing worth while into
the warp and woof of your life so it can never be anything but a part
of you! Turn your broncho round here and ride along side of me. Look
at our Mountain ahead! It isn't a Cross: it's a Crown! Do you think
I'm going to push a crown away from myself for the sake of having a lot
of flunkeys in a land I don't know bending themselves in their middle
at me all my life?" She laughed joyously, flinging her arms wide to
the drive and toss of the rolling wind tunneling up the trail on their
backs. She had pulled off her hat and the wind tossed forward her hair
in a frame of curls round an enamel miniature that always haunted
Wayland. "I love it," she said, "the harder it blows, the harder I
want to ride! You remember that night coming down the Ridge in the
storm? It was like Love and Life! And smell the air, Dick! It has
all the sunbeams of the summer imprisoned, done up in balsam fir and
balm of gilead and spices! Exchange _this_ life in the open, here, in
the very thick of things doing, for that ancient tapestry plush
upholstery blue-book existence?"

"I can't ask you, Eleanor! I haven't a thing on earth to offer but a
broken reputation and a lot of plans in the ditch! I ought never to
have let you know I loved you! I ought never to have let you care for
me! You know what you think and you know what I think of a man who
lets a woman give all. He isn't worthy of her. You know you have
never been out of my thoughts day or night since I met you, dear! I
couldn't have come through that Desert thing alive without you; and
I'll hold you in my heart every day of my life till I die." He had
taken off his hat an