Her breast was rising and falling tumultuously. A shiver ran through
her.

"No-- no. I'm not hiding-- anything," she gasped.

"Then if you're not you can't object to my going there."

She caught her hands together in despair. There was about him
something masterful that told her she could not prevent him from
investigating; and it was impossible to guess how he would act after
he knew. The men she had known had been bound by convention to respect
a woman's wishes, but even her ignorance of his type made guess that
this steel-eyed, close-knit young Westerner-- or was he a
Southerner?-- would be impervious to appeals founded upon the rules of
the society to which she had been accustomed. A glance at his
stone-wall face, at the lazy confidence of his manner, made her
dismally aware that the data gathered by her experience of the
masculine gender were insufficient to cover this specimen.

"You can't go."

But her imperative refusal was an appeal. For though she hated him
from the depths of her proud, untamed heart for the humiliation he had
put upon her, yet for the sake of that ferocious hunted animal she had
left lying under a cottonwood she must bend her spirit to win him.

"I'm going to sit in this game and see it out," he said, not unkindly.

"Please!"