She was that which made him young again, renewed in him youth and the joys of youth.

Take her away, the flower that smelled so sweet and luscious, the thing that he had held so often to his lips and to his breast?
Take away what was his, by every holy right, because it was all according to the law of the land and of the Holy Gospel, and what was left?
Only old age, the empty house bereft of a fair young mistress, something to smile at and to curse, if need be, since it was his own by the laws of God and man.
Take her away, and the two wives that he had buried long years ago, with their gray heads and lank, sour faces, from which the light of youth had fled with the first child come to them--their ghosts would seek him out.
They would sit at his table, and taunt him with his vanished Louise, asking him if he thought she was anything more than one of the trolls that tempted men aforetime; one of the devil's wenches that lured him into the secret garden, only at last to leave him scorned and alone.
Where had she gone, his troll, with the face of an angel?
Where had she gone?
Where would she go, except to her devil's lover at Slow Down Ranch?
He had just started for Slow Down Ranch armed with his greasy, well-thumbed Bible like a weapon in his pocket, when he heard a voice call him.

It was full of the devil's laughter.

It was the voice of Burlingame, the lawyer, on his horse.

Burlingame had had a weary day and was refreshing himself by a canter on the prairie.
"Where are you going ?" asked Burlingame, as he cantered up to Mazarine's wagon.
"To Slow Down Ranch ?" He saw the look of the drowned man in the face of Mazarine, over whom the flood of disaster had passed, and he guessed at once the cause of it; for Burlingame had the philosophy of a Satanic mind, and he knew the things that happen to human nature.
"So, she's gone again, has she ?" he added deliberately, with intent to put a knife into the old man's feelings and to turn it in the thick of them.