“Kiss me!...Are you a man?  Kiss me and save me!”

“Jane, you never played fair with me.  But now you’re blisterin’ your lips—­blackenin’ your soul with lies!”

“By the memory of my mother—­by my Bible—­no!  No, I have no Bible!  But by my hope of heaven I swear I love you!”

Lassiter’s gray lips formed soundless words that meant even her love could not avail to bend his will.  As if the hold of her arms was that of a child’s he loosened it and stepped away.

“Wait!  Don’t go!  Oh, hear a last word!...May a more just and merciful God than the God I was taught to worship judge me—­forgive me—­save me!  For I can no longer keep silent!...Lassiter, in pleading for Dyer I’ve been pleading more for my father.  My father was a Mormon master, close to the leaders of the church.  It was my father who sent Dyer out to proselyte.  It was my father who had the blue-ice eye and the beard of gold.  It was my father you got trace of in the past years.  Truly, Dyer ruined Milly Erne—­dragged her from her home—­to Utah—­to Cottonwoods.  But it was for my father!  If Milly Erne was ever wife of a Mormon that Mormon was my father!  I never knew—­never will know whether or not she was a wife.  Blind I may be, Lassiter—­fanatically faithful to a false religion I may have been but I know justice, and my father is beyond human justice.  Surely he is meeting just punishment—­somewhere.  Always it has appalled me—­the thought of your killing Dyer for my father’s sins.  So I have prayed!”

“Jane, the past is dead.  In my love for you I forgot the past.  This thing I’m about to do ain’t for myself or Milly or Fay.  It s not because of anythin’ that ever happened in the past, but for what is happenin’ right now.  It’s for you!...An’ listen.  Since I was a boy I’ve never thanked God for anythin’.  If there is a God—­an’ I’ve come to believe it—­I thank Him now for the years that made me Lassiter!...I can reach down en’ feel these big guns, en’ know what I can do with them.  An’, Jane, only one of the miracles Dyer professes to believe in can save him!”

Again for Jane Withersteen came the spinning of her brain in darkness, and as she whirled in endless chaos she seemed to be falling at the feet of a luminous figure—­a man—­Lassiter—­who had saved her from herself, who could not be changed, who would slay rightfully.  Then she slipped into utter blackness.

When she recovered from her faint she became aware that she was lying on a couch near the window in her sitting-room.  Her brow felt damp and cold and wet, some one was chafing her hands; she recognized Judkins, and then saw that his lean, hard face wore the hue and look of excessive agitation.

“Judkins!” Her voice broke weakly.

“Aw, Miss Withersteen, you’re comin’ round fine.  Now jest lay still a little.  You’re all right; everythin’s all right.”

“Where is—­he?”

“Who?”

“Lassiter!”