"That's how it was with me, you see. If I'd kept still, I'd 'a' gone sort of _loco_, I might have hurt him. But now ...
"Why, now, I can just remember that you know how I feel, that you wouldn't want a man who's said he loves you to be anythin' but kind to your ... to Ned Lytton."
When he finished, the woman took just one step forward. It was an impulsive movement, as if she would run to him, throw herself on him; and her lips were parted, her throat ready to cry out and ask him to take her and forget all else but that love he had declared for her. In a flash the madness was past; she remembered that she must not forget anything because of his confession of love, rather that she must keep more firmly than ever in mind those other factors of her life, that she must stifle and throttle this yearning for the man before her which had been latent, the existence of which she had denied to herself until this hour, and which was consuming her strength now with its desire for expression.
She walked slowly to the dresser and laid his gun there, as though even its slight weight were a burden.
"I'm so sorry," she said, as though physically weak, "I'm so sorry." He turned away from the window with a helpless smile. "I don't feel right, now, in letting you do this for me. I feel ..."
"Because ... because it means that you are giving me everything and I'm giving nothing in return."
"Don't think that, ma'am," with a slow, convinced shaking of his head, "I'm doin' little enough for what I get."
"What I get, ma'am, is this. I can come to see you. I can look at your face, I can see your hair, I can watch you move an' hear you talk an' be near you now an' then, even if I ain't any right, even if ..."
He threw out his arms and let them fall back to his thighs as he turned from her again.
"That's what I get in exchange," he continued a moment later. "That's my pay, an' for it, I'd go through anything, thirst or hunger or cold ... anythin', ma'am. That's how much I think of you: that's why carin' for ... for that man out home ain't any job even if he is ... if you are his!"
On that, doubt, desire, again overrode her training, her traditional manner of thought. She struggled to find words, but she could not even clarify her ideas. Impressions came to her in hot, passing flashes. A dozen times she was on the point of crying out, of telling him one thing or another, but each time the thought was gone before she could seize upon and crystallize it. All she fully realized was that this thing was love, big, clean, sanctified; that this man was a natural lover of women, with a body as great, as fine as the heart which could so reveal itself to her; and that in spite of that love's quality she was helpless, bound, gagged even, by the circumstances that life had thrown about her. She would have cried out against them, denouncing it all ...