"You mustn't look like that!" he said, turning his face from her. "It's more than I've deserved, it's more than I have a right to!" She put her hands on his shoulders, gently, bearing no weight upon them, and said soberly: "Look at me, Tom Beck!" He obeyed, rather reluctantly. "I have waited, oh, so long, to talk to you! I promised the doctor that nothing should disturb you until you were well. That's one reason why I brought you into the house, instead of leaving you with the men: so you could be quiet. "But there was another reason, a greater: I wanted you here, in this room, in my house, near me, where I could see and feel and help you, because seeing and touching and helping you helped me! "I needed your help, Tom! I shall always need you near me!" "Nobody would agree with you," he protested. "You're the most capable man in the country. You sure can look out for yourself." "But looking out for myself isn't all. That's just a tiny part of life,"--indicating how small it was with a thumb and fore-finger. "It belongs to the side of me which owns this ranch, which is a cattle woman, which wants to fatten steers and raise calves and prosper.... "There's the other part, the big part, the part that is really worth while: It's my heart, Tom. It's my heart that needs you!" His brows puckered. "I wish you wouldn't!" he said huskily. "I can't help that part, I had my chance ... an' I threw it away." "And I picked it up! Tom, that morning when you were crawling back from Cathedral Tank, across the desert, I was at the round-up camp. I went there to tell you, to make you understand--" "That's what hurts: that you had to ride thirty miles to tell me, to make me understand. Why, ma'am, I hadn't any right to have you do that for me. It was me who should have come crawlin' to you!" She took his hand again. "Look at me!" "Yes, ma'am," striving to lighten his manner. "Yes, _Jane!_" she insisted. "Jane," very softly. "You are very foolish, sticking to an abstract idea of how you should have conducted yourself. You wanted to die for me once; you want to put me off now because you think you wronged me. "Don't you see what a wrong that would be! Don't you see that?" She leaned forward, hands clasped at her chin, and tears swam upward into her eyes. "I am saying the things I've waited so long to say. "You have lain here ever since that black night when they carried you in and I had to feel your heart to know whether you lived. I've tried to say nothing that would disturb you, tried to keep your mind off the thing that has occupied mine. But I know you've been thinking; I know you've been uneasy. I have seen that in the looks, the words, the way you've laughed, rather forced and weakly at times. I have known what you thought.... "You are very foolish to be concerned with an idea of how you should have conducted yourself. You wanted to die for me once; you want to put me off now because you think you wronged me.