"I didn't think of your child when I began to talk to you as I did. I
was out for all I could get. I was the hunter. And you were the finest
woman that I'd ever met and talked with; you--"
"Oh, stop lying!" she cried with a face suddenly grown white and cold.
"It isn't lying. You're the sort of woman to drive men mad. I went mad,
and I didn't think of your child. But this morning in the flume I saved
my life by thinking of her, and I saved your life, too, maybe, by
thinking of her; and I owe her something. I'm going to try to pay back
by letting her keep her mother. I never felt towards a woman as I've
felt towards you; and that's why I want to make things not so bad for you
as they might be."
In her bitter eagerness she took a step nearer to him. "As things might
be, if you were the man you were yesterday, willing to throw up
everything for me?"
"Like that--if you put it so," he answered.
She walked slowly up to him, looking as though she would plunge a knife
into his heart. "I wish Jean Jacques had opened the gates," she said.
"It would have saved the hangman trouble."
Then suddenly, and with a cry, she raised her hand and struck him full in
the face with her fist.
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