And when he had been alone a week Mary came back. She could not help coming: her heart was a mother's, seeing that she had no children, and the poor thing she loved was her child. She was lonely without him. Perhaps he would be kind now, perhaps he would forgive her for being so hideous. For one side of her face was still beautiful: both her sorrowful eyes were lovely. She left the hospital, and never entered a house in town. She went out at night lest they should see her, and faced the hill-road, as it wound up the hills at the back of the town, in a starry darkness. Her strength was not much, but she had enduring Indian blood in her veins, that blood that helps poor squaws to carry loads their lordly men will not touch: that blood that helps them to suffer uncomplaining: that blood which, in their male children, helps to endure, if need be, the dreadful torture of the hostile fire and stake. She went swiftly through the night, and long before dawn came over the last hill in the trail which led to the desolate ranche where her steadfast heart lay. Under the stars and a faint fine glow that was the dawn, she saw the little shack, and then her heart and limbs failed her. She sat down and cried softly for her sad life and her tortured love, and her lost beauty under the shroud of white linen over her right cheek and jaw. Would he be kind to her, or would he hide his eyes and drive her from him? She knew nothing but that her sad heart needed him, even him, rather than any kind and gentle man that lived. She rose up trembling but set forward on the trail, and at last came to the house. A little chill breeze blew down from the hills, and a cloud hid the faint rose of dawn, so that it was full night as she crossed the threshold. For Ned, sleeping uneasily and afraid of the very house, had set the door open. She stayed and heard him move in the bed. She reached out her empty arms, but not to any God. She reached them to her wretched child, her man. And then Ned woke. "What's that?" he cried aloud. He saw a dark figure against the lucid night beyond the door. "What's that?" he cried again. His voice shook. "It's Mary," said the ghost he saw and feared. "Oh, you----" he cried. She heard him shake. "Have you come back?" She fell upon her knees by the bed. "Yes, Ned." He reached out a hand to her. It was cold as ice: for the blood had gone to his heart and brain. "You've come back--to me?" He knew it was a miracle, and, brutish and besotted as he was, he felt the awful benediction of her presence. "To me!" To him, to a man who had cursed her life at its springs, who had given her no joy, who had cut her to pieces by their bed and warm hearth! She had come back. "If you want me," she murmured. He shook and trembled. If he wanted her! He wanted nothing but her: she was the world to him. "If I want you!"