"I don't mean to let anything interrupt me until I have finished what I have undertaken to do; I'm past all that, now." "So you told me two evenings ago," she reminded him gently, adding: "And I have heard about what you did last night." "About the newspaper fracas? You don't approve of anything like that, of course. Neither did I, once. But you were right in what you said the other evening out at the dam; there is no middle way. You know what the animal tamers tell us about the beasts. I've had my taste of blood. There are a good many men in this world who need killing. Crawford Stanton is one of them, and I'm not sure that Mr. David Kinzie isn't another." "I can't hear what you say when you talk like that," she objected, looking past him with the gray eyes veiled. "Do you want me to lie down and let them put the steam-roller over me?" he demanded irritably. "Is that your ideal of the perfect man?" "I didn't say any such thing as that, did I?" "Perhaps not, in so many words. But you meant it." "What I said, and what I meant, had nothing at all to do with Timanyoni High Line and its fight for life," she said calmly, recalling the wandering gaze and letting him see her eyes. "I was thinking altogether of one man's attitude toward his world." "That was night before last," he put in soberly. "I've gone a long way since night before last, Corona." "I know you have. Why doesn't daddy come back?" "He'll come soon enough. You're not afraid to be here alone with me, are you?" "No; but anybody might be afraid of the man you are going to be." His laugh was as mirthless as the creaking of a rusty door-hinge. "You needn't put it in the future tense. I have already broken with whatever traditions there were left to break with. Last night I threatened to kill Allen, and, perhaps, I should have done it if he hadn't begged like a dog and dragged his wife and children into it." "I know," she acquiesced, and again she was looking past him. "And that isn't all. Yesterday, Kinzie set a trap for me and baited it with one of his clerks. For a little while it seemed as if the only way to spring the trap was for me to go after the clerk and put a bullet through him. It wasn't necessary, as it turned out, but if it had been----" "Oh, you couldn't!" she broke in quickly. "I can't believe that of you!"