Upstairs in her room Ann Lytton lay face down on her bed, hands gripping the coarse coverlet, eyes pressed shut, breath swift and irregular, heart racing. What had gone from the girl below--the hope, the spark, the leaven which makes life itself palatable--had come to her after those years of nightmare, and Ann was resisting, driving it back, telling herself that it must not be, that it could not be, not in the face of all that had happened; not now, when ethical, moral, legal ties bound her to another! Oh, she was bound, no mistaking that; but it was not Ann's heart that wrenched at the bonds. It was her conscience, her trained sense of right and wrong, the traditions that had moulded her. No, her heart was gone, utterly, to the man who crossed the hard, beaten street of Yavapai, head down, dejection in the swing of his shoulders, for her heart knew no right, no wrong ... only beauty and ugliness. Bayard, too, fought his bitter fight. The urge in him was to take her, to bear her away, to defy the laws that men had made to hurt her and to devil him; but something behind, something deep in him, forbade. He must go on, nursing back to strength that mockery of manhood who could lift his fuddled, obscene head and, with the blessing of society, claim Ann Lytton as his--her body, her soul! He must go on, though he wanted to strangle all life from the drunken ruin, because in him was the same rigid adherence to things that have been which held the woman there on her bed, face down, even though her limbs twitched to race after him and her arms yearned to twine about his neck, to pull herself close to his good chest, within which the great heart pumped. And Nora? Was she conscienceless? Indeed, not. She had promised to befriend this strange woman because Bruce Bayard had asked it. It was not for Ann's sake she dully planned diversion; it was because of her love for the owner of the Circle A that she stifled her sorrow, her natural jealousy. She knew that to refuse him, to follow her first impulses, would hurt him; and that would react, would hurt her, for her devotion was that sort which would go to any length to make the man of her heart happier. To Ann's ears came Bruce's sharp little whistle, and she could no longer lie still. She rose, half staggered to the window and stood holding the curtains the least bit apart, watching him stand motionless in the middle of the thoroughfare. Again, his whistle sounded and from a distance she heard the high call of the sorrel horse who had moved along the strip of grass that grew close beside the buildings, nibbling here and there. The animal approached his master at a swinging trot, holding his head far to the right, nose high in the air, that the trailing reins might not dangle under his feet. All the time he nickered his reassurance and, when he drew to a halt beside his master, Abe's voice retreated down into his long throat until it was only a guttural murmur of affection.