the girlish figure straightened.

"Forgive you!" A tear-stained face was looking into his. "Forgive you!
I'll never be able to forgive myself! You are a million times too good
for me, Ben Blair. Forgive you! I ought never to cease asking you to
forgive me!"

"Florence!" pleaded the man. "Florence!"

But the girl, in her turn, went on. "I have felt all the while that
certain things I saw here were unreal, that they were not what they
seemed. I have prevaricated to you deliberately. I haven't really been
here long, but it seems to me now that it's been years. As you said I
would, I've looked beneath the surface and seen the sham. At first I
wouldn't believe what I saw; but at last I couldn't help believing it,
and, oh, it hurt! I never expect to be so hurt again. I couldn't be. One
can only feel that way once in one's life." The small form trembled with
the memory, and the listener made a motion as if to stop her; but she
held him away.

"It isn't that I'm any longer blind; I am acting now with my eyes wide
open. It is something else that keeps me from you now, something that
crept in while I was learning my lesson, something I can't tell you."
Once more the girl could not control herself, and sobbing, trembling,
she covered her face. "Ben, Ben," she wailed, "why did you ever let me
come here? You could have kept me if you would--you can do--anything. I
would have loved you--I did love you all the time; only, only--" She
could say no more.

For a second the man did not understand; then like a flash came
realization, and he was upon his feet pacing up and down the narrow
room. To lose an object one cares for most is one thing; to have it
filched by another is something very different. He was elemental, this
man from the plains, and in some phases very illogical. The ways of the
higher civilization, where man loves many times, where he dines and
wines in good fellowship with him who is the husband of a former
love--these were not his ways. White anger was in his heart, not against
the woman, but against that other man. His fingers itched to be at his
throat, regardless of custom or law. Temporarily, the rights and wishes
of the woman, the prize of contention, were forgotten. Two young bucks
in the forest do not consider the feelings of the doe that is the reward
of the victor in the contest when they meet; and Ben Blair was very like
these wild things. Only by an effort of the will could he keep from
going immediately