For a woman--for her--for this sweet girl of a gentler world, that dream could be nothing else than hideous.

"Be just! Be fair!" Dan Anderson's soul demanded of him; and as best he saw justice and fairness to the woman he loved he answered for himself.
"Come," said the girl, gently, rousing herself from the lassitude which suddenly assailed her, "we must go in." His face was averted as he walked beside her.

There was no word that he could say.

Accord being gone from all the universe, he could not know that in her heart, humbled and shamed as it was, she understood and in some part forgave.
"It has been very beautiful to-night," she said, as he turned back at length from the door of Curly's house.
Choking, he left her.

As he stumbled blindly back, over the _arroyo_, there crossed on the heavens the long red line of a shooting star.