Supper was waiting for him, a supper hot and carefully prepared.  Serving it was a young woman he had not seen for long, a young woman minus the slightest trace of listlessness, with a dash of red ribbon at belt and throat, and a reflection of the same colour burning on either cheek.  A young woman, moreover, who anticipated his slightest wish, who took his hat and fetched his moccasins, and when the meal was over brought the buffalo robes and stretched them carefully on the gently sloping terrace just outside the ranch house door.  Meanwhile she chatted bubblingly, continuously; with a suggestion of the light-hearted gaiety of a year before.  To one less intimately acquainted with her than the man, her companion, she would have seemed again her old girlish self, returned, unchanged; but to him who knew her as himself there was now and then a note that rang false, a hint of suppressed excitement in the unwonted colour, an abnormal energy bordering on the feverish in her every motion.  Not in the least deceived was this impassive, all-observing human, not in the least in doubt as to the cause of the transformation:  yet through it all he gave no intimation of consciousness of the unusual, through it all he smiled, and smiled and smiled again.  Never was there a more appreciative diner than he, never a more attentive, sympathetic listener.  He said but little; but that was not remarkable.  He had never done so except when she had not.  When he looked at her there was an intensity that was almost uncanny in his gaze; but that also was not unusual.  There was ever a mystery in the depths of his steady black eyes.  Never more himself, never outwardly more unsuspicious was the man than on this occasion; even when, the meal complete, the girl had led him hand in hand out of doors, out into the soft spring night, out under the stars where she had stretched the two robes intimately close.

Thus, side by side, but not touching, they lay there, the soft south breeze fanning their faces, whispering wordless secrets in their ears; about them the friendly enveloping darkness, in their nostrils the subtle, indescribable fragrance of awakening earth and of growing things.  But not even then could the girl be still.  Far too full of this day’s revelation and of anticipation of things to come was she to be silent.  The mood of her merely changed.  The chatter, heretofore aimless, ceased.  In its place came a definite intent, a motive that prompted a definite question.  She was lying stretched out like a child, her crossed arms pillowing her head, her eyes looking up into the great unknown, when she gave it voice.  Even when she had done so, she did not alter her position.

“I wonder,” she said, “whether if one has made a mistake, it were better to go on without acknowledging it, living a lie and dying so, or to admit it and make another, who is innocent, instead of one’s self, pay the penalty?” She paused for breath after the long sentence.  “What do you think, How?”