I was as shocked as she.  Here I had been happy in the consciousness I was playing the hero, I had believed myself cutting a very pretty figure indeed in the lady’s eyes, and, instead—­well, my bubble was pricked.  As I looked into the lady’s eyes, I could feel my grand dimensions dwindling in my own eyes.  More than that, I began to feel ashamed.  Just why that look in her eyes should shame me, I didn’t know.  My education had not progressed to the self-analytic stage.  But shame me it did.  I felt mean, vile.  I felt, without consciously reasoning about it, that murdering Yankee Swope would, perhaps, be not such a noble deed after all.  I confronted something that was superior to the barbarous moral code of my brutal world.  I discovered it in the lady’s wide open eyes.  It vanquished me.  It took from me the feeling I was doing right.

But I could not surrender thus tamely.  Indeed, the need for the deed remained as urgent.

“But, ma’am, you know I must!” I said.  “You know—­he will kill him!”

Her little fingers were plucking at mine, which were stubbornly gripped about the revolver’s stock.  “I know you must not!” she answered.  “You must not take human life!” It was a commandment she uttered, and I took it as such.  Especially, when she added, “Do you think he would kill in that fashion?”

That finished me.  Aye, she knew how to beat down my defense; her woman’s insight had supplied her with an invincible argument.  I averted my eyes from hers, and hung my head; I allowed her to take the revolver from my grasp.

For I knew the answer to her question.  “He” would not creep into the cabin and shoot Captain Swope.  She meant Newman, and I knew that Newman would scorn to do the thing I planned to do.  Kill Swope in fair fight, with chances equal?  Newman might do that.  But shoot him down like a mad dog, when he was unprepared and perhaps unarmed—­no, Newman would not do that.  Nor would any decent man.

I passed another milestone in my evolution into manhood, as I stood there, hangdog and ashamed.  I added another “don’t” to my list.

She brushed back the hair from my forehead.  Oh, there was magic in her fingers.  That gentle stroke restored my pride, my self-respect.  It was a gesture of understanding.  I felt now as I felt the first time I saw the lady, like a little boy before a wise and merciful mother.  I knew the lady understood.  She knew my heart was clean, my motive good.

She held up the weapon she had taken from me.  “This—­is not the way,” she said.  “It is never the way.  You must not!”

“I must not,” I echoed.  “Yes, ma’am; I won’t do it now.  But—­what—­how——­”

I floundered and stopped.  “What—­how,” aye, that was it.  If I did not kill Captain Swope what would happen to Newman?  That was the question that hammered against my mind, that sent a wave of sick fear through me.  If I did not kill Swope—­then Newman was lost.