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“Child, child!” She paused, her arms folded across her breast, her throat a-throb. “You can’t understand–thank God, you never will understand–what the future holds for me. You are going back home; back to your own people, your own life. You’ve been here but a few months. To you it has been a lark, an outing, an experience. In a few short weeks it will be but a memory, stowed away in its own niche, the pleasant features alone remaining vivid.

“Even, while here, you’ve never known the life itself. You’ve had Jack, the novelty of a strange environment, your anticipation of sure release. You are merely like a sightseer, locked for a minute in a prison-cell, for the sake of a new sensation.

“You can’t understand, I say. You are this, and I–I am the life-prisoner in the cell beyond, peering at you through the bars, viewing you and your mock imprisonment.”

Once more the speaker was in motion, to and fro, to and fro, in the shuttle-trail. “The chief difference is, that the life-prisoner has a hope of pardon; I have none–absolutely none.”

“Mollie”–pleadingly, “you mustn’t. I’ll ask Jack to give Steve a place at home, and you can go–“

“Go!” The bitterness of her heart welled up and vibrated in the word. “Go! We can’t go, now or ever. It’s death to Steve if we leave. I’ve got to stay here, month after month, year after year, dragging my life out until I grow gray-haired–until I die!” She halted, her arms tensely folded, her breath coming quick. Only the intensity of her emotion saved the attitude from being histrionic. In a sudden outburst, she fiercely apostrophized:

“Oh, Dakota! I hate you, I hate you! Because I am a woman, I hate you! Because I would live in a house, and not in this endless dreary waste of a dead world, I hate you! Because your very emptiness and solitude are worse than a prison, because the calls of the living things that creep and fly over your endless bosom are more mournful than death itself, I hate you! Because I would be free, because I respect sex, because of the disdain for womanhood that dwells in your crushing silence, I hate–oh, my God, how I hate you!” She threw her arms wide, in a frantic gesture of rebellion.

“I want but this,” she cried passionately: “to be free; free, as I was at home, in God’s country. And I can never be so here–never, never, never! Oh, Annie, I’m homesick–desperately, miserably homesick! I wish to Heaven I were dead!”

Annie Warren, child-woman that she was, was helpless, when face to face with the unusual. Her senses were numbed, paralyzed. One thought alone suggested itself.

“But”–haltingly–“for Steve’s sake–certainly, for him–“

“Stop! As you love me, stop!” Again no suggestion of the histrionic in the passionate voice. “Don’t say that now. I can’t stand it. I–oh, I don’t mean that! Forget that I said it. I’m not responsible this morning. Please leave me.”

She was prostrate on the bed at last, her whole body a-tremble.

“But–Mollie–“

“Go–go!” cried Mollie, wildly. “Please go!”

Awed to silence, Annie Warren stared helplessly a moment, then gathered her shawl about her shoulders, and slipped silently away.

III

Mollie Babcock was listlessly going about some imperative domestic task, behind the mean structure which represented home for her, when Steve came upon her.

She was not looking for him. He had been gone so long, out there somewhere, in that abomination of desolation, building a railroad, that the morbid fancy had come to dwell with her that the prairie had swallowed him, and that she would never see him more. So he came upon her unawares.

The buffalo grass rustled with the passage of her skirts. His eyes lighted, the man seemed to grow in stature–six feet of sun-blessed, primitive health. Now was the time–

“Mollie!”

There was a sudden gasp from the woman. With a hand to her throat, she wheeled swiftly round, confronting him.