Rhoda stood rigidly. Molly, sensing trouble, hovered restlessly just out of earshot.
"If you married DeWitt," Kut-le went on, "could you forget me? Forget the desert? Forget our days and nights? Forget my arms about you?"
"Oh, no! No!" cried Rhoda. "You know that I shall love you always!"
"And will DeWitt want what you offer him?" Kut-le went on, mercilessly.
Rhoda winced.
"I wish," said Kut-le huskily, "you never will know how I wish that you had come to me freely, feeling that the sacrifice was worth while!"
Rhoda looked at him wonderingly. After all the weeks of iron determination, was the young giant weakening, was his great heart failing him!
"I had thought," he went on, "that you were big enough to stand the test. That after the travail and the heart scourging, you would see--and would come to me freely--strong enough to smile at all your regrets and fears. That thought steeled me to put you through the torture. But if now, at the end, you are coming to me only because you must! Rhoda, I don't want you on those terms."
Rhoda gasped. She felt as one feels when in a dream one falls an unexpected and endless distance. The relief from the pressure of Kut-le's will that had forced her on, for so long, left her weak and aimless.
Yet somehow she found the strength to say: "Kut-le, we must give each other up! I love you so that I can let you go! Oh, can't you see how I feel about it!"
Again Kut-le looked far off over vista of mountains and cañon. His eyes were deep and abstracted, as if he saw into the years ahead with knowledge denied to Rhoda. Then he turned to Rhoda and searched her face with burning gaze. He eyed her hair, her lovely heart-broken face, her slender figure. For a moment his face was tortured by a look of doubt that was heart-shattering. He lifted Rhoda across his chest in the old way and held her to him with passionate tenderness. He laid his face against hers and she heard him whisper: "O my love! Love of my youth and my manhood!" Then he set her very gently to her feet. "Don't cry," he said. "I can't bear it!"
Rhoda threw her arms above her head in an abandonment of agony.
"Oh, I cannot, cannot bear this!" Then she added more calmly: "I suffer as much as you, Kut-le!"
Again the look of unspeakable grief crossed the young Indian's face, but it immediately became inscrutable. He led Rhoda along the cañon edge.
"Do you see that little trail going down?" he said.