"It's because of 'that woman'--who is my wife. It may be true that she treats me like a dog, for she wouldn't be cruel to the meanest cur. But I'd rather be her dog than any other woman's master. "So you see now. It's come to that with me. I won her love and married her for my own advantage. I lost her love because she found me out--through you. Mild justice that, perhaps! But all the same, getting her for mine _has_ been for my advantage. In a different way from what I planned, but ten thousand times greater. Though she's taken her love from me, she's given me back my soul. Nothing can rob me of that so long as I run straight. "And I tell you, Madalena, this ranch, where I'm working out some kind of expiation and maybe redemption, _is_ God's earth for me. _Now_ do you understand?" For an instant the woman was silent. Then she broke into loud sobbing, which she did not try to check. "You are a fool, Don!" she wept. "A fool!" "Maybe. But I'm not the devil's fool as I used to be. Don't cry. You might be heard. Come. It's time to go. We've said all we have to say to each other except good-bye--if that's not mockery." Madalena dried her tears, still sobbing under her breath. "At least take me to the automobile," she said. "Don't send me off alone in the night. I am afraid." "There's nothing to be afraid of," Knight answered, the flame of his fierceness burnt down. "But I'll go with you, and put you on the way back to El Paso. Come along!" As he spoke, he started, and Madalena was forced to go with him, forced to keep up with his long strides if she would not be left behind. When they had gone Annesley lay motionless, as though she were under a spell. The man's words to the other woman wove the spell which bound her, listening as they repeated themselves in her mind. Again and again she heard them, as they had fallen from his lips. His expiation--perhaps his redemption--here on his bit of "God's earth" ... "It may be true that she treats me like a dog.... But I'd rather be her dog than any other woman's master...." And this was Easter eve, a year to the night since his martyrdom began! Something seemed to seize Annesley by the hand and break the bonds that had held her, something strong although invisible. She sat up with a faint cry, as of one awakened from a dream, and slipped out of the hammock. There was a dim idea in her mind that she must go along the road where they had gone, so as to meet Knight on his way back. She did not know what she should say to him, or whether she could say anything at all; but the something which had taken her hand and snatched her out of the hammock dragged her on and on. At first she obeyed the force blindly. "I must see him! I must see him!" The words spoke themselves in her head. But when she had hurried out of the enclosure walled in by the cactus hedge, the brilliant moonlight seemed to pierce her brain, and make a cold, calm appeal to her reason.