“And it is not courage.  Courage is a force of will driving you into danger for some high purpose.  I want you to realize that I am not such a barbarian that I do not know that I could have kept you out of it all if I had had proper self-control.  Though probably, on the impulse, I would do the fool thing over again!  Yes, that’s the worst of it!”

“There is a devil in him!” Ignacio’s words were sounding in her ears.  To how many men had he said, “I am going to kill you?” What other quarrels had he known in his wanderings from Colorado to Chihuahua?

“If you really want my opinion, I am glad, so far as I am concerned, that you did fight,” she said lightly.  “Aren’t you a hero?  Isn’t the town free of Leddy?  And you take the train in the morning!”

“Yes.”

The monosyllable was drawn out rather faintly.  For the first time since they had met on the pass she felt she was mistress of the situation.  This time she had not to plead with him in fear for his life.  She could regard him without any sense of obligation, this invader of her garden retreat who had to put in one more afternoon in a dull desert town before he was away to that outside world which she might know only through books and memory.

She rose exultantly, disregarding any formality that she would owe to the average guest; for an average guest he was not.  Her attitude meant that she was having the last word; that she was showing her mettle.

He did not rise.  He was staring into the sunlight, as if it were darkness alive with flitting spectres which baffled identification.

“Yes, back—­back to armies of Leddys!” he said slowly.

But this she saw as still another pose.  It did not make her pause in gathering up her sewing.  She was convinced that there was nothing more for her to say, except to give their parting an appearance of ease and unconcern.

“Is it work you mean?  You are not used to that, I take it?” she inquired a little sarcastically.

“Yes, call it work,” he answered, looking away from the spectres and back to her.

“And you have never done any work!” she added.

“Not much,” he admitted, with his old, airy carelessness.  He was smiling at the spectres now, as he had at the dinosaur.

“As there is nothing particular about the garden that I can show you—­” she was moving away.

“No, I will be walking back to the house,” he said after she had taken a few steps.  “Will you wait on my slow pace?”

He reached for his crutches, lifted himself to his feet and swung to her side.  She who wished that the interview were over saw that it must be prolonged.  Then suddenly she realized the weakness as well as the brusqueness of her attitude.  She had been about to fly from him as from something that she feared.  It was not necessary.  It was foolish, even cowardly.

“I thought perhaps you preferred to be alone, you seemed so abstracted,” she said, lamely; and then, as they came out into the sunlight in the circle, she began talking of the garden as she would to any visitor; of its beginnings, its growth, and its future, when her father’s plans should have been fulfilled.