Wemple had not realized before what was happening to them both, although
all Santa Fé, except themselves, knew it very well. But at last he
understood that he loved her and that she knew it, and that she also knew
she had confessed in her eyes her love for him. What was he going to do
about it? That was the question he had to face and to settle; and he
went out alone and tramped over the brown hills and across _arroyos_ and
through clumps of sage brush and juniper and cactus, and argued it out
with himself.

He loved her, and she loved him. Yet--she was an Indian, and did he want
an Indian wife? But after all that had passed between them, and the
silent, mutual confession of the afternoon, could he in honor do else
than marry her? Ever since he had come West he had held the firm
conviction that an Indian can never be anything but an Indian, and that
to attempt to make anything else out of him is not only a sheer waste of
time, effort, and money, but is also an injury to the Indian himself,
because it gives him desires and ambitions that can do nothing but make
discord with his Indian nature.

But it seemed different with her. In truth, he told himself, she seemed
more akin to the white than to the Indian race. That age-long heritage
of religious belief and practice that has made a basis of character for
the pueblo Indian did not seem to have found expression in her. But if
after years should bring it to the surface and she should prove to be
Indian at heart, would it raise a wall between them or would it drag him
down, because of his great love for her, to that same Indian level? If
that Indian nature was there now, patched over and hidden by present
surroundings, would not happiness be impossible between them? And if he
believed that unhappiness would be the sure result of their marriage