Franklin’s heart stood cold.  “You’re going to keep your promise,” he said slowly and coldly.  “You’re going to keep a girl’s promise, from which death released you years ago—­released you honourably.  You were too young then to know what you were doing—–­you didn’t know what love could mean—­yet you are released from that promise.  And now, for the sake of a mere sentiment, you are going to ruin my life for me, and you’re going to ruin your own life, throw it away, all alone out here, with nothing about you such as you ought to have.  And you call that honour?”

“Well, then, call it choice!” said Mary Ellen, with what she took to be a noble lie upon her lips.  “It is ended!”

Franklin sat cold and dumb at this, all the world seeming to him to have gone quite blank.  He could not at first grasp this sentence in its full effect, it meant so much to him.  He shivered, and a sigh broke from him as from one hurt deep and knowing that his hurt is fatal.  Yet, after his fashion, he fought mute, struggling for some time before he dared trust his voice or his emotions.

“Very well,” he said.  “I’ll not crawl—­not for any woman on earth!  It’s over.  I’m sorry.  Dear little woman, I wanted to be your friend.  I wanted to take care of you.  I wanted to love you and to see if I couldn’t make a future for us both.”

“My future is done.  Leave me.  Find some one else to love.”

“Thank you.  You do indeed value me very high!” he replied, setting his jaws hard together.

“They tell me men love the nearest woman always.  I was the only one—­”

“Yes, you were the only one,” said Franklin slowly, “and you always will be the only one.  Good-bye.”

It seemed to him he heard a breath, a whisper, a soft word that said “good-bye.”  It had a tenderness that set a lump in his throat, but it was followed almost at once with a calmer commonplace.

“We must go back,” said Mary Ellen.  “It is growing dark.”

Franklin wheeled the team sharply about toward the house, which was indeed becoming indistinct in the falling twilight.  As the vehicle turned about, the crunching of the wheels started a great gray prairie owl, which rose almost beneath the horses’ noses and flapped slowly off.  The apparition set the wild black horse into a sudden simulation of terror, as though he had never before seen an owl upon the prairies.  Rearing and plunging, he tore loose the hook of one of the single-trees, and in a flash stood half free, at right angles now to the vehicle instead of at its front, and struggling to break loose from the neck-yoke.  At the moment they were crossing just along the head of one of the coulees, and the struggles of the horse, which was upon the side next to the gully, rapidly dragged his mate down also.  In a flash Franklin saw that he could not get the team back upon the rim, and knew that he was confronted with an ugly accident.  He chose