In her impersonal calm she was subjecting him to an exquisite torture.  He was a man flayed past all endurance, flayed by a love that fed on the revelation of a mystery in her being superbly in control.  The riot of all the colors of the sky spoke from his eyes as he sprang to his feet.  He became as intense as in the supreme moment in the arroyo; as reckless as when he walked across the store toward a gun-muzzle.  Only hers were this time the set, still features.  His were lighted with all the strength of him and all the faith of him.

“A part!” he cried.  “Yes, a part—­a sovereign and true part which I shall ever play!  I was going that day we first met, going before the legate of the millions came to me.  Why did I stay?  Because I could not go when I saw that you wanted to turn me out of the garden!”

His quivering words were spoken to a profile of bronze, over which flickered a smile as she answered with a prompting and disinterested analysis.

“You said it was to make callouses on your hands.  But that must have been persiflage.  The truth is that you imagined a challenger.  You wanted to win a victory!” she answered.

“It was for you that I calloused my hands!”

“Time will make them soft!”

She was half teasing now, but teasing through the visor, not over the wall.

“And if I sought victory I saw that I was being beaten while I made a profession of you, not of gardening!  Yes, of you!  I could confess it to all the world and its ridicule!”

“Jack, you are dramatic!”

If she would only once look at him!  If he could only speak into her eyes!  If her breaths did not come and go so regularly!

“Why did I take to the trail after Pedro Nogales struck at me with his knife?  Because I saw the look on your face when you saw that I had broken his arm.  I had not meant to break his arm—­yet I know that I might have done worse but for you!  I did not mean to kill Leddy—­yet there was something in me which might have killed him but for you!”

“I am glad to have prevented murder!” she answered almost harshly.

A shadow of horror, as if in recollection of the scene in the arroyo and beside the hedge, passed over her face.

“Yes, I understand!  I understand!” he said.  “And you must hear why this terrible impulse rose in me.”

“I know.”

“You know?  You know?” he repeated.

“About the millions,” she corrected herself, hastily.  “Go on, Jack, if you wish!” Urgency crept into her tone, the urgency of wishing to have done with a scene which she was bearing with the fortitude of tightened nerves.

“It was the millions that sent me out here with a message, when I did not much care about anything, and their message was:  ’We do not want to see you again if you are to be forever a weakling.  Get strong, for our power is to the strong!  Get strong, or do not come back!’”