“Yes, lass, an’ I reckon you’d better try me.”

“Oh, how good you are!  I felt that—­the very first time I was with you.  I’ve wanted to come to you—­to tell you my troubles.  I love dad and he loves me, but he doesn’t understand.  Dad is wrapped up in his son.  I’ve had no one.  I never had any one.”

“You have some one now,” returned Wade, with a rich, deep mellowness in his voice that soothed Columbine and made her wonder.  “An’ because I’ve been through so much I can tell you what’ll help you....  Lass, if a woman isn’t big an’ brave, how will a man ever be?  There’s more in women than in men.  Life has given you a hard knock, placin’ you here—­no real parents—­an’ makin’ you responsible to a man whose only fault is blinded love for his son.  Well, you’ve got to meet it, face it, with what a woman has more of than any man.  Courage!  Suppose you do hate this Buster Jack.  Suppose you do love this poor, crippled Wilson Moore....  Lass, don’t look like that!  Don’t deny.  You do love that boy....  Well, it’s hell.  But you can never tell what’ll happen when you’re honest and square.  If you feel it your duty to pay your debt to the old man you call dad—­to pay it by marryin’ his son, why do it, an’ be a woman.  There’s nothin’ as great as a woman can be.  There’s happiness that comes in strange, unheard-of ways.  There’s more in this life than what you want most. You didn’t place yourself in this fix.  So if you meet it with courage an’ faithfulness to yourself, why, it’ll not turn out as you dread....  Some day, if you ever think you’re broken-hearted, I’ll tell you my story.  An’ then you’ll not think your lot so hard.  For I’ve had a broken heart an’ ruined life, an’ yet I’ve lived on an’ on, findin’ happiness I never dreamed would come, fightin’ or workin’.  An’ how I found the world beautiful, an’ how I love the flowers an’ hills an’ wild things so well—­that, just that would be enough to live for!...  An’ think, lass, of what a wonderful happiness will come to me in showin’ all this to you.  That’ll be the crownin’ glory.  An’ if it’s that much to me, then you be sure there’s nothin’ on earth I won’t do for you.”

Columbine lifted her tear-stained face with a light of inspiration.

“Oh, Wilson was right!” she murmured.  “You are Heaven-sent!  And I’m going to love you!”

CHAPTER IX

A new spirit, or a liberation of her own, had fired Columbine, and was now burning within her, unquenchable and unutterable.  Some divine spark had penetrated into that mysterious depth of her, to inflame and to illumine, so that when she arose from this hour of calamity she felt that to the tenderness and sorrow and fidelity in her soul had been added the lightning flash of passion.

“Oh, Ben—­shall I be able to hold onto this?” she cried, flinging wide her arms, as if to embrace the winds of heaven.

“This what, lass?” he asked.