“I am goin’ my own course,” he broke in. “Can’t yu’ see how it must be about a man? It’s not for their benefit, friends or enemies, that I have got this thing to do. If any man happened to say I was a thief and I heard about it, would I let him go on spreadin’ such a thing of me? Don’t I owe my own honesty something better than that? Would I sit down in a corner rubbin’ my honesty and whisperin’ to it, ‘There! there! I know you ain’t a thief?’ No, seh; not a little bit! What men say about my nature is not just merely an outside thing. For the fact that I let ’em keep on sayin’ it is a proof I don’t value my nature enough to shield it from their slander and give them their punishment. And that’s being a poor sort of a jay.” She had grown very white. “Can’t yu’ see how it must be about a man?” he repeated. “I cannot,” she answered, in a voice that scarcely seemed her own. “If I ought to, I cannot. To shed blood in cold blood. When I heard about that last fall,--about the killing of those cattle thieves,--I kept saying to myself: ‘He had to do it. It was a public duty.’ And lying sleepless I got used to Wyoming being different from Vermont. But this--” she gave a shudder--“when I think of to-morrow, of you and me, and of-- If you do this, there can be no to-morrow for you and me.” At these words he also turned white. “Do you mean--” he asked, and could go no farther. Nor could she answer him, but turned her head away. “This would be the end?” he asked. Her head faintly moved to signify yes. He stood still, his hand shaking a little. “Will you look at me and say that?” he murmured at length. She did not move. “Can you do it?” he said. His sweetness made her turn, but could not pierce her frozen resolve. She gazed at him across the great distance of her despair. “Then it is really so?” he said. Her lips tried to form words, but failed. He looked out of the window, and saw nothing but shadow. The blue of the mountains was now become a deep purple. Suddenly his hand closed hard. “Good-by, then,” he said. At that word she was at his feet, clutching him. “For my sake,” she begged him. “For my sake.” A tremble passed through his frame. She felt his legs shake as she held them, and, looking up, she saw that his eyes were closed with misery. Then he opened them, and in their steady look she read her answer. He unclasped her hands from holding him, and raised her to her feet. “I have no right to kiss you any more,” he said. And then, before his desire could break him down from this, he was gone, and she was alone. She did not fall, or totter, but stood motionless. And next--it seemed a moment and it seemed eternity--she heard in the distance a shot, and then two shots. Out of the window she saw people beginning to run. At that she turned and fled to her room, and flung herself face downward upon the floor.