"I had no notion that you entertained any such feeling towards me. It is something in the nature of a--er--revelation. You are quite right about leaving. Upon second thought, you are quite right about everything--right to keep your promise to Mrs. Toomey, since you gave it, right in your assertion that I am jealous. I am--but not in the sense in which you mean it.
"I have been jealous of your dignity--of the respect that is due you. I have resented keenly any attempt to belittle you. That is why Disston was not welcome when he came to see you. It is the reason why I have not shown a pleasure I did not feel in his writing you!"
"What do you mean?" she demanded.
"I mean that he took you to that dance on a wager--a bet--to prove that he had the courage. To make a spectacle of you--for a story with which to regale his friends and laugh over."
She groped for the edge of the table.
"Who told you?"
"Toomey."
"I don't believe it!"
"Teeters verified it."
She sat down on the box from which she had risen.
Unmoved by the blow he had dealt her, he continued: "You went to that dance against my wishes. What I expected to happen did happen, though you did not choose to tell me.
"In my descent through various strata of society I have learned something of types and of human nature. In protesting, my only thought was to save you pain and disappointment--as in this instance--but experience, it seems, is the only teacher.
"To-morrow I am going to Prouty, hire a herder to do your work and mortgage the outfit for half its value. It will be yours to use as it pleases you. You have earned it. Then," with a gesture of finality, "the door is open to you. I want you to go where you will be happy."
With his usual deliberation of movement he put on his hat and went out to change the horses on picket, while Kate, stunned by the incredible crisis and the revelation concerning Hugh Disston, sat where she had dropped, staring at the agate-ware platter upon which the mutton grease was hardening.
It was Mormon Joe's invariable custom to help her with the dishes, but he did not return, so she arose, finally, and set the food away automatically, with the unseeing look of a hypnotic subject. She washed the dishes and dried them, trying to realize that she would be leaving this shortly--that there would be a last time in the immediate future. Her anger was lost in grief and amazement. There was something so implacable, so steel-like in Mormon Joe's hardness that it did not occur to her to plead with him for forgiveness. And Hughie! She told herself that she could not turn to a traitor for help or sympathy. She blew out the lantern, tied the tent flap behind her, and ran through the fast falling snow to her wagon.