But she assured herself that she could not bring upon him the shame and ignominy of a relationship with a cattle thief, no matter how intensely he wanted her.

That would be doing him an injustice, and she would never agree to it.
But it hurt, this knowledge that she could not marry Lawler; that she must put away from her the happiness that might be hers for the taking; that she must crush the eager impulses that surged through her; that she must repulse the one man who could make her heart beat faster; the man for whom she longed with an intensity that sometimes appalled her.
She got up after a while and lighted an oil-lamp, placing it upon the table in the big room.

She closed the door and then dropped listlessly into a chair beside the table, her eyes glistening, her lips quivering.
The future was somber in aspect, almost hopeless, it seemed.

And yet into her mind as she sat there crept a determination--a resolution to tell her father what she knew; to tell him that she could no longer endure the disgrace of his crimes.
That meant of course that she would have to leave him, for she knew he was weak, and that he had been drawn into crime and had not the moral strength to redeem himself.
When about midnight she heard the beating of hoofs near the cabin she sat very quiet, rigid, still determined, her eyes flashing with resolution.
She was standing near the door of her room when her father entered, and as he stood for an instant blinking at the light, trying to accustom his eyes to it after riding for some time through the darkness; she watched him, noting--as she had noted many times before--the weakness of his mouth and the furtive gleam of his eyes.
He had not always been like that.

Before the death of her mother she had always admired him, aware of the sturdiness of his character, of his rugged manliness, and of his devotion to her mother.
Adversity had changed him, had weakened him.