The day seemed to endure for an age. Rosalind did not leave the car; she did not go near her father, shut up alone in his apartment; she ate nothing, ignoring the negro attendant when he told her that lunch was served, huddled in a chair beside an open window she decided a battle. She saw the forces of reason and justice rout the hosts of hatred and crime, and she got up finally, her face pallid, but resolute, secure in the knowledge that she had decided wisely. She pitied Corrigan. Had it been within her power she would have prevented the tragedy. And yet she could not blame these people. They were playing the game honestly, and their patience had been sadly strained by one player who had persisted in breaking the rules. He had been swept away by his peers, which was as fair a way as any law – any human law – could deal with him. In her own East he would have paid the same penalty. The method would have been more refined, to be sure; there would have been a long legal squabble, with its tedious delays, but in the end Corrigan would have paid. There was a retributive justice for all those who infracted the rules of the game. It had found Corrigan.

At three o’clock in the afternoon she washed her face. The cool water refreshed her, and with reviving spirits she combed her hair, brushed the dust from her clothing, and looked into a mirror. There were dark hollows under her eyes, a haunting, dreading expression in them. For she could not help thinking about what had happened there – down the street where the Vigilantes had gone.

She dropped listlessly into another chair beside a window, this time facing the station. She saw her horse, hitched to the rail at the station platform, where she had left it that morning. That seemed to have been days ago! A period of aching calm had succeeded the tumult of the morning. The street was soundless, deserted. Those men who had played leading parts in the tragedy were not now visible. She would have deserted the town too, had it not been for her father. The tragedy had unnerved him, and she must stay with him until he recovered. She had asked the porter about him, and the latter had reported that he seemed to be asleep.

A breeze carried a whisper to her as she sat at the window:

“Where’s ‘Firebrand’ now?” said a voice.

“Sleepin’. The clerk in the Castle says he’s makin’ up for lost time.”

She did not bother to try to see the owners of the voices; her gaze was on the plains, far and vast; and the sky, clear, with a pearly shimmer that dazzled her. She closed her eyes. She could not have told how long she slept. She awoke to the light touch of the porter, and she saw Trevison standing in the open doorway of the car.

The dust of the battle had been removed. An admiring barber had worked carefully over him; a doctor had mended his arm. Except for a noticeable thinness of the face, and a certain drawn expression of the eyes, he was the same Trevison who had spoken so frankly to her one day out on the plains when he had taken her into his confidence. In the look that he gave her now was the same frankness, clouded a little, she thought, by some emotion – which she could not fathom.

“I have come to apologize,” he said; “for various unjust thoughts with which I have been obsessed.” Before she could reply he had taken two or three swift steps and was standing over her, and was speaking again, his voice vibrant and regretful: “I ought to have known better than to think – what I did – of you. I have no excuses to make, except that I was insane with a fear that my ten years of labor and lonesomeness were to be wasted. I have just had a talk with Hester Harvey, and she has shown me what a fool I have been. She – ”

Rosalind got up, laughing lowly, tremulously. “I talked with Hester this morning. And I think – ”

“She told you – ” he began, his voice leaping.

“Many things.” She looked straight at him, her eyes glowing, but they drooped under the heat of his. “You don’t need to feel elated over it – there were two of us.” She felt that the surge of joy that ran over her would have shown in her face had it not been for a sudden recollection of what the Vigilantes had done that morning. That recollection paled her cheeks and froze the smile on her lips.

He was watching her closely and saw her face harden. A shadow passed over his own. He thought he could see the hopelessness of staying longer. “A woman’s love,” he said, gloomily, “is a wonderful thing. It clings through trouble and tragedy – never faltering.” She looked at him, startled, trying to solve the enigma of this speech. He laughed, bitterly. “That’s what makes a woman superior to mere man. Love exalts her. It makes a savage of a man. I suppose it is ‘good-bye.’” He held out a hand to her and she took it, holding it limply, looking at him in wonderment, her heart heavy with regret. “I wish you luck and happiness,” he said. “Corrigan is a man in spite of – of many faults. You can redeem him; you – ”

“Is a man!” Her hand tightened on his; he could feel her tremble. “Why – why – I thought – Didn’t they – ”

“Didn’t tghey tell you? The fools!” He laughed derisively. “They let him go. They knew I wouldn’t want it. They did it for me. He went East on the noon train – quite alive, I assure you. I am glad of it – for your sake.”

“For my sake!” Her voice lifted in mingled joy and derision, and both her hands were squeezing his with a pressure that made his blood leap with a longing to possess her. “For my sake!” she repeated, and the emphasis made him gasp and stiffen. “For your sake – for both of us, Trevison! Oh, what fools we were! What fools all people are, not to trust and believe!”

“What do you mean?” He drew her toward him, roughly, and held her hands in a grip that made her wince. But she looked straight at him in spite of the pain, her eyes brimming with a promise that he could not mistake.

“Can’t you see?” she said to him, her voice quavering; “must I tell you?”