“I want to talk to you,” said Stewart. Madeline started, turned to him, and now she saw the earlier Stewart, the man who reminded her of their first meeting at El Cajon, of that memorable meeting at Chiricahua. “I want to ask you something,” he went on. “I’ve been wanting to know something. That’s why I’ve hung on here. You never spoke to me, never noticed me, never gave me a chance to ask you. But now I’m going over—over the border. And I want to know. Why did you refuse to listen to me?” At his last words that hot shame, tenfold more stifling than when it had before humiliated Madeline, rushed over her, sending the scarlet in a wave to her temples. It seemed that his words made her realize she was actually face to face with him, that somehow a shame she would rather have died than revealed was being liberated. Biting her lips to hold back speech, she jerked on Majesty’s bridle, struck him with her whip, spurred him. Stewart’s iron arm held the horse. Then Madeline, in a flash of passion, struck at Stewart’s face, missed it, struck again, and hit. With one pull, almost drawing her from the saddle, he tore the whip from her hands. It was not that action on his part, or the sudden strong masterfulness of his look, so much as the livid mark on his face where the whip had lashed that quieted, if it did not check, her fury. “That’s nothing,” he said, with something of his old audacity. “That’s nothing to how you’ve hurt me.” Madeline battled with herself for control. This man would not be denied. Never before had the hardness of his face, the flinty hardness of these desert-bred men, so struck her with its revelation of the unbridled spirit. He looked stern, haggard, bitter. The dark shade was changing to gray—the gray to ash-color of passion. About him now there was only the ghost of that finer, gentler man she had helped to bring into being. The piercing dark eyes he bent upon her burned her, went through her as if he were looking into her soul. Then Madeline’s quick sight caught a fleeting doubt, a wistfulness, a surprised and saddened certainty in his eyes, saw it shade and pass away. Her woman’s intuition, as keen as her sight, told her Stewart in that moment had sustained a shock of bitter, final truth. For the third time he repeated his question to her. Madeline did not answer; she could not speak.