"
"By God," broke out Buck, "I'm happier than if you'd found a gold mine,
Kate. It don't seem no ways--but if you seen that with your own eyes, it's
possible true. He's changed."
"I've been almost afraid to be happy all these years," she said, "but now I
want to sing and cry at the same time. My heart is so full that it's
overflowing, Buck."
She brushed the tears away and smiled at them.
"Tell me all about yourselves. Everything. You first, Lee. You've been
longer away."
He did not answer for a moment, but sat with his head fallen, watching her
thoughtfully. Women had been the special curse in Lee Haines' life; they
had driven him to the crime that sent him West into outlawry long years
before; through women, as he himself foreboded, he would come at last to
some sordid, petty end; but here sat the only one he had loved without
question, without regret, purely and deeply, and as he watched her, more
beautiful than she had been in her girlhood, it seemed, as he heard the
fitful laughter of Joan outside, the old sorrow came storming up in him,
and the sense of loss.
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