d, he threw his arms
around her and attempted to kiss her.

"Let me alone! I'll kill myself if you touch me!"

"I guess you won't." He kissed her full on the mouth, then let her go.

Sinking into a chair, she sobbed in helpless, angry despair.

"Oh, how shameful, how shameful!"

He let her alone for a little; then, when the violence of her sobbing
had died away, came over and laid his hand gently on her shoulder.

"Hadn't you better cave in, my girl? You've tried your strength against
mine and it hasn't amounted to much. You even tried to shoot me and I
only made you look like a darned fool. I guess you're beat, my girl.
There's only one law here. That's the law of the strongest. You've got
to do what I want because I can make you."

"Haven't you any generosity?"

"Not the kind you want, I guess."

She gave a little moan of anguish.

"Hark!" He held up his hand as if to call her attention to something.
For a moment, hope flamed from its embers. But stealing a glance at his
face from beneath her drooping lashes, she saw that she was mistaken.
The last spark died, to be rekindled no more.

"Listen! Listen to the silence. Can't you hear it, the silence of the
prairie? Why, we might be the only two people in the world, you and me,
here in this little shack, right out _in_ the prairie. Are you
listening? There ain't a sound. It might be the garden of Eden. What's
that about male and female, created He them? I guess you're my wife, my
girl. And I want you."

Nora gave him a sidelong look of terror and remained dumb. What would
have been the use of words even if she could have found voice to utter
them?

Taking up the lamp, he went to the door of the bedroom and threw it
wide. She saw without looking that he remained standing, like a statue
of Fate, on the threshold.

To gain time, she picked up the dishcloth and began to scrub at an
imaginary spot on the table.

"I guess it's getting late. You'll be able to have a good clean-out
to-morrow."

"To-morrow!" A violent shudder, similar to the convulsion of the day
before, shook her from head to foot. But she kept on with her scrubbing.

"Come!"

The word smote her ear with all the impact of a cannon shot. The walls
caught it, and gave it back. There _was_ no other sound in heaven or
earth than the echo of that word!

Shame, anguish and fear, in turn, passed over her face. Then, with her
hands before her eyes, she passed beyond him, through the door which h