All the fire left her. "Yes," she whispered.

He felt that she was searching his face, as if suddenly in doubt of
him.

"Will you let me tell you--everything?"

"Shoot ahead."

"Some parts will be hard to believe."

"Lady, they won't be nothing as hard to believe as what I've seen you
do with my own eyes."

Then she began to tell her story, and she found a vast comfort in
seeing the ugly, stern face of Sinclair lighted by the burning end of
his cigarette. He never looked at her, but always fixed his stare on
the sea of blackness which was the lower valley.

"All the trouble began with a theory. My father felt that the thing for
a girl was to be educated in the East and marry in the West. He was
full of maxims, you see. 'They turn out knowledge in cities; they turn
out men in mountains,' was one of his maxims. He thought and argued and
lived along those lines. So as soon as I was half grown--oh, I was a
wild tomboy!"

"Eh?" cut in Sinclair.

"I could really do the things then that you'd like to have a woman do,"