“After all, Jane, mebbe you’re only blind—­Mormon blind.  That only can explain what’s close to selfishness—­”

“I’m not selfish.  I despise the very word.  If I were free—­”

“But you’re not free.  Not free of Mormonism.  An’ in playin’ this game with me you’ve been unfaithful.”

“Un-faithful!” faltered Jane.

“Yes, I said unfaithful.  You’re faithful to your Bishop an’ unfaithful to yourself.  You’re false to your womanhood an’ true to your religion.  But for a savin’ innocence you’d have made yourself low an’ vile—­ betrayin’ yourself, betrayin’ me—­all to bind my hands an’ keep me from snuffin’ out Mormon life.  It’s your damned Mormon blindness.”

“Is it vile—­is it blind—­is it only Mormonism to save human life?  No, Lassiter, that’s God’s law, divine, universal for all Christians.”

“The blindness I mean is blindness that keeps you from seein’ the truth.  I’ve known many good Mormons.  But some are blacker than hell.  You won’t see that even when you know it.  Else, why all this blind passion to save the life of that—­that....”

Jane shut out the light, and the hands she held over her eyes trembled and quivered against her face.

“Blind—­yes, en’ let me make it clear en’ simple to you,” Lassiter went on, his voice losing its tone of anger.  “Take, for instance, that idea of yours last night when you wanted my guns.  It was good an’ beautiful, an’ showed your heart—­but—­why, Jane, it was crazy.  Mind I’m assumin’ that life to me is as sweet as to any other man.  An’ to preserve that life is each man’s first an’ closest thought.  Where would any man be on this border without guns?  Where, especially, would Lassiter be?  Well, I’d be under the sage with thousands of other men now livin’ an’ sure better men than me.  Gun-packin’ in the West since the Civil War has growed into a kind of moral law.  An’ out here on this border it’s the difference between a man an’ somethin’ not a man.  Look what your takin’ Venters’s guns from him all but made him!  Why, your churchmen carry guns.  Tull has killed a man an’ drawed on others.  Your Bishop has shot a half dozen men, an’ it wasn’t through prayers of his that they recovered.  An’ to-day he’d have shot me if he’d been quick enough on the draw.  Could I walk or ride down into Cottonwoods without my guns?  This is a wild time, Jane Withersteen, this year of our Lord eighteen seventy- one.”

“No time—­for a woman!” exclaimed Jane, brokenly.  “Oh, Lassiter, I feel helpless—­lost—­and don’t know where to turn.  If I am blind—­then—­I need some one—­a friend—­you, Lassiter—­more than ever!”

“Well, I didn’t say nothin’ about goin’ back on you, did I?”

CHAPTER XII.  THE INVISIBLE HAND

Jane received a letter from Bishop Dyer, not in his own handwriting, which stated that the abrupt termination of their interview had left him in some doubt as to her future conduct.  A slight injury had incapacitated him from seeking another meeting at present, the letter went on to say, and ended with a request which was virtually a command, that she call upon him at once.