"No, but I have found you, dear. You need not try, for I am not going
to let you get away. It is not the officer's daughter and the enlisted
man any more. Those barriers are all gone. I do not mean that I am
indifferent to the stain on my name, or any less desirous of wringing
the truth from Gene Le Fevre's lips, but even the memory of that past
can keep me silent no longer. You are alone in the world now, alone
and in the shadow of disgrace--you need me."

He stopped, amazed at the boldness of his own words, and, in the
silence of that hesitation, Molly lifted her eyes to his face.

"I think I have always needed you," she said simply.

He did not touch her, except to clasp the extended hands. The
loneliness of the girl, here, helpless, alone with him in that
wilderness of snow, bore in upon his consciousness with a suddenness
that robbed him of all sense of triumph. He had spoken passionately,
recklessly, inspired by her nearness, her dependence upon him. He had
faith that she cared; her eyes, her manner, had told him this, yet even
now he could not realize all that was meant by that quiet confession.
The iron discipline of years would not relax instantly; in spite of the
boldness of his utterance, he was still the soldier, feeling the chasm
of rank. Her very confession, so simply spoken, tended to confuse, to
mystify him.

"Do you mean," he asked eagerly, "that you love me?"

"What else should I mean?" she said slowly. "It is not new to me; I
have known for a long while."

"That I loved you!"

"Yes," smiling now. "Love is no mystery to a woman. I do not care
because you are in the ranks; that is only a temporary condition. I
knew you out there, at the very first, as a gentleman. I have never
doubted you. Here, in this wilderness, I am not afraid. It is not
because my father is dead or because he has been guilty of crime, that
I say this. I would have said it before, on the balcony there in
Dodge, had you asked me. It is not the uniform I love, but the man.
Can you not understand?"

"Will you marry me--a sergeant of cavalry?"

She was still smiling, her eyes frankly looking into his own.

"I will marry David Hamlin," she answered firmly, "let him be what he
may."

The man let out his suppressed breath in a sob of relief, his eyes
brightening with triumph.

"Oh, Molly! Molly!" he cried, "I cannot tell you what this all means
to me. There is no past now to my life, but all future."

"