“Look at me,” she repeated.

But he could not lift his head.  He was abject, crushed.  He dared not show his swollen, blackened face.  His fierce, cramped posture revealed more than his features might have shown; it betrayed the torturing shame of a man of pride and passion, a man who had been confronted in his degradation by the woman he had dared to enshrine in his heart.  It betrayed his love.

“Listen, then,” went on Madeline, and her voice was unsteady.  “Listen to me, Stewart.  The greatest men are those who have fallen deepest into the mire, sinned most, suffered most, and then have fought their evil natures and conquered.  I think you can shake off this desperate mood and be a man.”

“No!” he cried.

“Listen to me again.  Somehow I know you’re worthy of Stillwell’s love.  Will you come back with us—­for his sake?”

“No.  It’s too late, I tell you.”

“Stewart, the best thing in life is faith in human nature.  I have faith in you.  I believe you are worth it.”

“You’re only kind and good—­saying that.  You can’t mean it.”

“I mean it with all my heart,” she replied, a sudden rich warmth suffusing her body as she saw the first sign of his softening.  “Will you come back—­if not for your own sake or Stillwell’s—­ then for mine?”

“What am I to such a woman as you?”

“A man in trouble, Stewart.  But I have come to help you, to show my faith in you.”

“If I believed that I might try,” he said.

“Listen,” she began, softly, hurriedly.  “My word is not lightly given.  Let it prove my faith in you.  Look at me now and say you will come.”

He heaved up his big frame as if trying to cast off a giant’s burden, and then slowly he turned toward her.  His face was a blotched and terrible thing.  The physical brutalizing marks were there, and at that instant all that appeared human to Madeline was the dawning in dead, furnace-like eyes of a beautiful light.

“I’ll come,” he whispered, huskily.  “Give me a few days to straighten up, then I’ll come.”

IX The New Foreman

Toward the end of the week Stillwell informed Madeline that Stewart had arrived at the ranch and had taken up quarters with Nels.

“Gene’s sick.  He looks bad,” said the old cattleman.  “He’s so weak an’ shaky he can’t lift a cup.  Nels says that Gene has hed some bad spells.  A little liquor would straighten him up now.  But Nels can’t force him to drink a drop, an’ has hed to sneak some liquor in his coffee.  Wal, I think we’ll pull Gene through.  He’s forgotten a lot.  I was goin’ to tell him what he did to me up at Rodeo.  But I know if he’d believe it he’d be sicker than he is.  Gene’s losin’ his mind, or he’s got somethin’ powerful strange on it.”

From that time Stillwell, who evidently found Madeline his most sympathetic listener, unburdened himself daily of his hopes and fears and conjectures.