“There seems nothing more to be said, then,” she said, “except that I will not go.”

Even yet Blair did not move.

“You will go.  The carriage comes in ten minutes,” he reiterated calmly.

The small figure stiffened, the dainty chin tilted in the air.

“I defy you to tell me how you can force me to go!”

It was the supreme moment, but Benjamin Blair showed no trace of excitement or of passion.  His folded arms remained passive across his chest.

“Florence Baker, did I ever lie to you?”

The girl’s lip trembled.  She knew now what to expect.

“No,” she said.

“You are quite sure?”

“Yes, I am quite sure.”

“Did I ever say I would do anything that I did not do?”

The girl had an all but irrepressible desire to cry out, to cover her face like a child.  A flash of anger at her inability to maintain her self-control swept over her.

“No,” she admitted.  “I never knew you to break your word.”

“Very well, then,” still no haste, no anger,—­only the relentless calm which was infinitely more terrible than either.  “I will tell you why of your own choice you will go with me.  It is because you value the life of Clarence Sidwell; because, as surely as I have not lied to you or to any human being in the past, there is no power on earth that can otherwise keep me away from him an hour longer.”

Realization came instantaneously to Florence Baker and blotted out self-consciousness.  The nervous tension vanished as fog before the sun.

“You would not do it,” she said, very steadily.  “You could not do it!”

Ben Blair said not a word.

“You could not,” repeated the girl swiftly; “could not, because you—­love me!”

One of the man’s hands loosened in an unconscious gesture.

“Don’t repeat that, please, or trust in it,” he answered.  “You misled me once, but you can’t mislead me again.  It is because I love you that I will do what I said.”

There was but one weapon in the arsenal adequate to meet the emergency.  With a sudden motion, the girl came close to him.

“Ben, Ben Blair,” her arms flashed around the man’s neck, the brown eyes—­moist, sparkling—­were turned to his face, “promise me you will not do it.”  The dainty throat swelled and receded with her short quick breaths.  “Promise me!  Please promise me!”

For a second the rancher did not stir; then, very gently, he freed himself and moved a step backward.

“Florence,” he said slowly, “you do not know me even yet.”  He drew out his big old-fashioned silver watch, once Rankin’s.  “You still have four minutes to get ready—­no more, no less.”

Silence like that of a death-chamber fell over the bright little dining-room.  From the outside came the sound of Mollie’s step as she moved back and forth, back and forth, but dared not enter.  A boy was clipping the lawn, and the muffled purr of the mower, accompanied by the bit of popular ragtime he was whistling, stole into the room.