Go to
your work."

"My work has nothing to do with this matter between you and me. So
that's what you are!" he repeated, insistent on his one idea, looking
her up and down. "A detective sneak!"

"I am done with the work. I am a human being, at any rate, and you
promised me----"

He sliced his hand through the air. "That's all off! You lied to me. It
must have been a lie, seeing what you are. But I believed, and I stood
up and took you for mine. The word has gone out. Every man on the Noda
will know about it. I had no rights over your life till you met me. But
when a woman lies to a man to make him do this or that she is laughing
at him behind his back. You have played me for a poor fool in the tall
timber. That's the word that's starting now."

"If you have found out how worthless I am," she sobbed, "you can go on
with your work and be a real man."

He loosed the leash on himself. He mocked her with bitter irony, his
face working hideously. "'Go on with your work!' Don't you have any idea
what men are up these woods? Who'll take orders from me after this?
They'll hoot me off the river! I'm done. You have put me down and
under!"

More than the spirit of sacrifice was actuating her then. Her impulses
were inextricably mingled, but they all tended to one end, to save him
from error. His scorn had touched her heart; meeting him on his own
plane--on the level of honesty--woman with man, she was conscious of
bitter despair because he was leaving her life. She was fighting for her
own--for the old man in the big house, for the new love that was
springing up out of her sympathy for this champion from whom, without
realizing the peril of her procedure, she had filched the weapons of his
manhood at the moment when he needed them most.

"The heart has gone out of me! You have taken it out!" he cried.

"I swear before our God that I'll be straight with you from now on.
Won't it put heart in you if I'm your wife, standing by you through
everything?" She took a long breath. Her desperation drove her to the
limits of appeal. "I love you! I know it. I must have known it when I
urged you on to your duty. I'm willing to say it here before all. Take
me, and let's fight together."

In her hysterical fear lest she was losing all, she took no thought of
her pride; she was making passionate, primitive appeal to the chosen
mate.

But she did not understand how absolutely hopeless was the wreck of this
man's fortunes, as Latisan