sten and believe--I have nothing, but I'm a
woman--a beautiful woman, Lassiter--a passionate, loving woman--and I
love you! Take me--hide me in some wild place--and love me and mend my
broken heart. Spare him and take me away."

She lifted her face closer and closer to his, until their lips nearly
touched, and she hung upon his neck, and with strength almost spent
pressed and still pressed her palpitating body to his.

"Kiss me!" she whispered, blindly.

"No--not at your price!" he answered. His voice had changed or she had
lost clearness of hearing.

"Kiss me!... Are you a man? Kiss me and save me!"

"Jane, you never played fair with me. But now you're blisterin' your
lips--blackenin' your soul with lies!"

"By the memory of my mother--by my Bible--no! No, I have no Bible! But
by my hope of heaven I swear I love you!"

Lassiter's gray lips formed soundless words that meant even her love
could not avail to bend his will. As if the hold of her arms was that of
a child's he loosened it and stepped away.

"Wait! Don't go! Oh, hear a last word!... May a more just and merciful
God than the God I was taught to worship judge me--forgive me--save me!
For I can no longer keep silent!... Lassiter, in pleading for Dyer I've
been pleading more for my father. My father was a Mormon master, close
to the leaders of the church. It was my father who sent Dyer out to
proselyte. It was my father who had the blue-ice eye and the beard of
gold. It was my father you got trace of in the past years. Truly, Dyer
ruined Milly Erne--dragged her from her home--to Utah--to Cottonwoods.
But it was for my father! If Milly Erne was ever wife of a Mormon that
Mormon was my father! I never knew--never will know whether or not she
was a wife. Blind I may be, Lassiter--fanatically faithful to a false
religion I may have been but I know justice, and my father is beyond
human justice. Surely he is meeting just punishment--somewhere. Always
it has appalled me--the thought of your killing Dyer for my father's
sins. So I have prayed!"

"Jane, the past is dead. In my love for you I forgot the past. This
thing I'm about to do ain't for myself or Milly or Fay. It s not because
of anythin' that ever happened in the past, but for what is happenin'
right now. It's for you!... An' listen. Since I was a boy I've never
thanked God for anythin'. If there is a God--an' I've come to believe
it--I thank Him now for the years that made me Lassiter!... I can reach