But about that other--you knew all the time we couldn't--couldn't ever--I'd never marry a thief." The great and wistful regret of her voice was a thing not to be escaped.
She stood, a very splendid figure, clean and marvelous of heart as she was begrimed and bedraggled of body now, her great vital force not abated by what she had gone through.

She spread her hands just apart and looked at him in what she herself felt was to be the last meeting of their lives; in which she could afford to reveal all her soul for once to a man, and then go about a woman's business of living a life fed on the husks of love given her by some other man.
He knew that he had seen one more miracle.

But, chastened now, he could, he must, keep down his own eager arms.

He heard her speak once more, her voice like some melancholy bell of vespers of a golden evening.
"Oh, Will Banion, how could you take away a girl's heart and leave her miserable all her life ?" The cry literally broke from her.

It seemed in her own ears the sudden voice of some other woman speaking--some unaccountable, strange woman whom she never had seen or known in all her life.
"Your--heart ?" he whispered, now close to her in the dusk.