were through in safety.

She leaned against him helpless for an instant before she had strength
to disengage herself. "Thank you. I'm all right now."

"I thought you were going to faint," he explained.

She nodded. "I nearly did."

His face was colorless. "You saved my life."

"Then we're quits, for you saved mine," she answered, with a shaken
attempt at a smile.

He shook his head. "That's not the same at all. I had to do that, and
there was no risk to it. But you chose to save me, to risk your life for
mine."

She saw that he was greatly moved, and that his emotion had swept away
the effects of the liquid as a fresh breeze does a fog.

"I didn't know I was risking my life. I saw you didn't see."

"I didn't think there was a woman alive had the pluck to do it--and for
me, your enemy. That what you count me, isn't it--an enemy?"

"I don't know. I can't quite think of you as friend, can I?"

"And yet I would have protected you from any danger at any cost."

"Except the danger of yourself," she said, in low voice, meeting him eye
to eye.

He accepted her correction with a groan, an wheeled away, leaning his
arms on the corral fence and looking away to that saddle between the
peak which still glowed with sunset light.

"I haven't met a woman of your kind before in ten years," he said
presently. "I've lived on you looks, your motions, the inflections
of your voice. I suppose I've been starved for that sort of thing and
didn't know it till you came. It's been like a glimpse of heaven to me."
He laughed bitterly: and went on: "Of course, I had to take to drinking
and let you see the devil I am. When I'm sober you would be as safe with
me as with York. But the excitement of meeting you--I have to ride my
emotions to death so as to drain them to the uttermost. Drink stimulates
the imagination, and I drank."

"I'm sorry."

Her voice said more than the words. He looked at her curiously. "You're
only a girl. What do you know about men of my sort? You have been
wrappered and sheltered all your life. And yet you understand me better
than any of the people I meet. All my life I have fought with myself.
I might have been a gentleman and I'm only a wolf. My appetites and
passions, stronger than myself dragged me down. It was Kismet, the
destiny ordained for me from my birth."

"Isn't there always hope for a man who knows his weaknesses and fights
against them?" she asked timidly.

"No, there is not," came the har