"Yes," smiling now. "Love is no mystery to a woman. I do not care because you are in the ranks; that is only a temporary condition. I knew you out there, at the very first, as a gentleman. I have never doubted you. Here, in this wilderness, I am not afraid. It is not because my father is dead or because he has been guilty of crime, that I say this. I would have said it before, on the balcony there in Dodge, had you asked me. It is not the uniform I love, but the man. Can you not understand?"
"Will you marry me--a sergeant of cavalry?"
She was still smiling, her eyes frankly looking into his own.
"I will marry David Hamlin," she answered firmly, "let him be what he may."
The man let out his suppressed breath in a sob of relief, his eyes brightening with triumph.
"Oh, Molly! Molly!" he cried, "I cannot tell you what this all means to me. There is no past now to my life, but all future."
"Am I that to you?"
"That! Yes, and a thousand times more! I had ambition once, opportunity, even wealth. They were swept away by a man's lie, a woman's perfidy. Out of that wreck, I crawled into the world again a mere thing. I lived simply because I must live, skulking in obscurity, my only inspiration the hope of an honorable death or an opportunity for vengeance. Mine was the life of the ranks in the desert, associating with the lowest scum, in constant contact with savagery. I could not speak to a decent woman, or be a man among men. There was nothing left me but to brood over wrongs, and plot revenge. I became morose, savage, a mere creature of discipline, food for powder. It was no more when I first met you. But with that meeting the chains snapped, the old ambitions of life returned. You were a mere girl from the East; you did not understand, nor care about the snobbery of army life. No, it was not that--you were above it. You trusted me, treated me as a friend, almost as an equal. I loved you then, when we parted on the trail, but I went back to New Mexico to fight fate. It was such a hopeless dream, yet all summer long I rode with memory tugging at my heart. I grew to hate myself, but could never forget you."
She drew nearer, her hand upon his arm, her face uplifted.
"And you thought I did not care?"
"How could I dream you did?" almost bitterly. "You were gracious, kind--but you were a major's daughter, as far away from me as the stars. I never heard from you; not even a rumor of your whereabouts came to me across the plains. I supposed you had returned East; had passed out of my life forever. Then that night when we rode into Dodge I saw you again--saw you in the yellow lamp-light watching us pass, heard you ask what troops those were, and I knew instantly all my fighting out there in the desert had been vain--that you were forever the one, one woman."