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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.