“You have some touchstone, I suppose,” replied Rhoda contemptuously, “by which you are made competent to sit in judgment on mankind?”

“I sure have!” said Kut-le.  “It is that you so live that you die spiritually richer than you were born.  Life is a simple thing, after all.  To keep one’s body and soul healthy, to bear children, to give more than we take.  And I believe that in the end it will seem to have been worth while.”

Rhoda made no answer.  Kut-le ate on in silence for a time, then he said wistfully: 

“Don’t you enjoy this meal with me, just a little?”

Rhoda glanced from Kut-le’s naked body to her own torn clothing, then at the crude meal.

“I don’t enjoy it, no,” she answered quietly.

Something in the quiet sincerity of the voice caused Kut-le to rise abruptly and order the Indians to break camp.  But on the trail that night he rode close beside her whenever the way permitted and talked to her of the beauty of the desert.  At last, lashed to desperation by her indifference, he cried: 

“Can’t you see that your silence leads to nothing—­that it maddens me!”

“That is what I want it to do,” returned Rhoda calmly.  “I shall be so glad if I can make you suffer a touch of what I am enduring!”

Kut-le did not reply for a moment, then he began slowly: 

“You imagine that I am not suffering?  Try to put yourself in my place for a moment!  Can’t you see how I love you?  Can’t you see that my stealing was the only thing that I could do, loving you so?  Wouldn’t you have done the same in my place?  If I had been a white man I wouldn’t have been driven to this.  I would have had an equal chance with DeWitt and could have won easily.  But I had all the prejudice against my alien race to fight.  There was but one thing to do:  to take you to the naked desert where you would be forced to see life as I see it, where you would be forced to see me, the man, far from any false standards of civilization.”

Rhoda would have replied but Kut-le gave her no chance.

“I know what white conventions demand of me.  But, I tell you, my love is above them.  I, not suffer!  Rhoda!  To see you in pain!  To see your loathing of me!  To have you helpless in my arms and yet to keep you safe!  Rhoda!  Rhoda!  Do you believe I do not suffer?”

Anger died out of Rhoda.  She saw tragedy in the situation, tragedy that was not hers.  She saw herself and Kut-le racially, not individually.  She saw Kut-le suffering all the helpless grief of race alienation, saw him the victim of passions as great as the desires of the alien races for the white always must be.  Rhoda forgot herself.  She laid a slender hand on Kut-le’s.

“I am sorry,” she said softly.  “I think I begin to understand.  But, Kut-le, it can never, never be!  You are fighting a battle that was lost when the white and Indian races were created.  It can never, never be, Kut-le.”