And you say
this--you, _after all I know regarding you_!"

Again I felt that old chill of terror and self-reproach strike to my
heart. I saw my guilt once more, horrible as though an actual presence.
I remembered what Ellen Meriwether had said to me regarding any other or
earlier covenant. I recalled my troth, plighted earlier, before I had
ever seen her,--my faith, pledged in another world. So, seeing myself
utterly ruined in my own sight and his and hers, I turned to him at
length, with no pride in my bearing.

"So I presume Gordon Orme has told you," I said to him. "You know of
Grace Sheraton, back there?"

His lips but closed the tighter. "Have you told her--have you told this
to my girl?" he asked, finally.

"Draw up your file!" I cried, springing to my feet. "Execute me! I
deserve it. No, I have not told her. I planned to do so--I should never
have allowed her to sign her name there before I had told her
everything--been fair to her as I could. But her accident left her
weak--I could not tell her--a thousand things delayed it. Yes, it was my
fault."

He looked me over with contempt. "You are not fit to touch the shoe on
my girl's foot," he said slowly. "But now, since this thing has begun,
since you have thus involved her and compromised her, and as I imagine
in some foul way have engaged her affections--now, I say, it must go on.
When we get to Laramie, by God! sir, you shall marry that girl. And then
out you go, and never see her face again. She is too good for you, but
where you can be of use to her, for this reason, you shall be used."

I seated myself, my head in my hands, and pondered. He was commanding me
to do that which was my dearest wish in life. But he was commanding me
to complete my own folly. "Colonel Meriwether," said I to him, finally,
"if it would do her any good I would give up my life for her. But her
father can neither tell me how nor when my marriage ceremony runs; nor
can he tell me when to leave the side of the woman who is my wife. I am
subject to the orders of no man in the world."

"You refuse to do what you have planned to do? Sir, that shows you as
you are. You proposed to--to live with her here, but not be bound to her
elsewhere!"

"It is not true!" I said to him in somber anger. "I proposed to put
before her the fact of my own weakness, of my own self-deception, which
also was deception of her. I propose to do that now."

"If you did, she would refuse to look at you again.