I saw a god, a man as beautiful as she was.  They might have stood, indeed, they did stand alone in the heart of a desert—­alone in the world—­alone with their love and their agony.  It was a solemn and profound moment for me.  I faintly realized how great it must have been for them, yet all the while there hammered at my mind the vital thing at stake.  Had they forgotten, while I remembered?  It might have been only a moment that he held her.  It might have been my own agitation that conjured up such swift and whirling thoughts.  But if my mind sometimes played me false my eyes never had.  I thought I saw Diane Sampson die in Steele’s arms; I could have sworn his heart was breaking; and mine was on the point of breaking, too.

How beautiful they were!  How strong, how mercifully strong, yet shaken, he seemed!  How tenderly, hopelessly, fatally appealing she was in that hour of her broken life!  If I had been Steele I would have forsworn my duty, honor, name, service for her sake.  Had I mind enough to divine his torture, his temptation, his narrow escape?  I seemed to feel them, at any rate, and while I saw him with a beautiful light on his face, I saw him also ghastly, ashen, with hands that shook as they groped around her, loosing her, only to draw her convulsively back again.  It was the saddest sight I had ever seen.  Death was nothing to it.  Here was the death of happiness.  He must wreck the life of the woman who loved him and whom he loved.  I was becoming half frantic, almost ready to cry out the uselessness of this scene, almost on the point of pulling them apart, when Sally dragged me away.  Her clinging hold then made me feel perhaps a little of what Miss Sampson’s must have been to Steele.

How different the feeling when it was mine!  I could have thrust them apart, after all my schemes and tricks, to throw them together, in vague, undefined fear of their embrace.  Still, when love beat at my own pulses, when Sally’s soft hand held me tight and she leaned to me—­that was different.  I was glad to be led away—­glad to have a chance to pull myself together.  But was I to have that chance?  Sally, who in the stife of emotion had been forgotten, might have to be reckoned with.  Deep within me, some motive, some purpose, was being born in travail.  I did not know what, but instinctively I feared Sally.  I feared her because I loved her.  My wits came back to combat my passion.  This hazel-eyed girl, soft, fragile creature, might be harder to move than the Ranger.  But could she divine a motive scarcely yet formed in my brain?  Suddenly I became cool, with craft to conceal.

“Oh, Russ!  What’s the matter with you?” she queried quickly.  “Can’t Diane and Steele, you and I ride away from this bloody, bad country?  Our own lives, our happiness, come first, do they not?”

“They ought to, I suppose,” I muttered, fighting against the insidious sweetness of her.  I knew then I must keep my lips shut or betray myself.