He heard the upward creaking of the stairs, and then Birch’s high voice: “Now watch your step, ma’am. It is kind of dark here on these steps.”

He started up, and groped his way to the table. His hand encountered the glass shade of the lamp; he caught it as it fell. He lit a match and the darkness retreated a little from the sulphur’s flame, retreated farther as the bright wedge mounted from the wick. As he replaced the chimney there was a knock. “Deputy!” Birch said.

He opened the door. Kate stood there in the thick shadows; he could smell the violet water she wore. “Here is Miss Dollar to see you,” Birch said, in an oily voice.

“Come in,” he said, and Kate entered. Birch faded into the darkness, and the steps creaked downward. The voices in the room down the hall were still. Kate closed the door and glanced around; at his cartridge belt hanging like a snakeskin from the peg beside the door, at the clothes hanging on their nails, at the pine table and chair and the cot with its sagging springs. Lamplight glowed in a warm streak upon her cheek. “Sit down, Kate,” he said.

She moved toward the chair, but instead of seating herself she put her hands on the back and leaned there. He saw her looking around a second time, with her chin lifted and her face as impassive as an Indian’s. “This is where you live,” she said finally.

“It isn’t much.”

She did not speak again for a long time, and he backed up and sat down on the edge of the bed. She turned a little to watch him; one side of her face was rosy from the lamp and the other half in shadow, so that it looked like only half a face. “I’m leaving tomorrow,” she said.

“You are?” he said numbly. “Why — why are you, Kate?”

“There is nothing here for me.”

He didn’t know what she meant, but he nodded. He felt relief and pain in equal portions as he watched her face, which he thought very beautiful with the light giving life to it. He had never known what she was, but he had known she was not for him. He had dreamed of her, but he had not even known how to do that; his dreams of her had just been a continuation of the sweet, vapid day and night dreams embodied once in Myra Burbage, not so much because Myra had been attractive to him as because she was the only girl there was near at hand; knowing then, as he knew now, that there would be no woman for him. He was too ugly, too poor, and there were too few women ever to reach down the list of unmarried men to his name.

“You’re going with Morgan?” he asked.

Her face looked suddenly angry, but her voice was not. “No, not Morgan. Or anybody.”

He almost asked her about Buck, but he had once and she had acted as though he were stupid. “By yourself?” he asked.

“By myself.”

She said that, too, as though it should mean something. But he felt numb. What had been said was only words, but now the realization of the actuality of her leaving came over him, and he began to grasp at the remembrance of those times he had seen her, as though he must hold them preciously to him so that they would not disappear with her. He had, he thought, the key to remember her by.

“When?” he said.

“Tomorrow or — Tomorrow.”

He nodded again, as though it were nothing. He could hear the roomers talking down the hall again. He rubbed his bandaged hand upon his thigh and nodded, and felt again, more intensely than he had ever felt it, his ineptness, his inadequacy, his incapacity with the words which should be spoken.

“I guess I didn’t expect anything,” Kate said harshly. “I guess you are sulking with the rest tonight.”

“Sulking?”

“About Blaisedell,” she said, and went on before he could speak. “I was the only one that thought it was wonderful to see,” she said in a bitter voice. “For I saw Tom Morgan try to do a decent thing. I think it must have been the first decent thing he had ever tried to do, and did it like he was doing a dirty trick. And had it fall apart on him. Because Blaisedell was too—” Her voice caught. “Too—” she said, and shook her head, and did not go on. Then she said, as though she were trying to hit him, “I’m sorry you feel cheated.”

“You think if Blaisedell had posted him he would have gone?”

“Of course he would have gone. He was trying to give Blaisedell that — so people would think Blaisedell had scared him out. I think it’s funny,” she said, but she did not sound as though she did.

They were talking about Blaisedell and Morgan like everyone else, and he knew she did not want to, and he did not want to.

He looked down at his hands in his lap and said, “I’d thought you might be going with Morgan.”

“Why?”

“Well, I talked to him. He said you’d been his girl but that you were through with each other. But I thought you might have—”

“I told you I’d been his girl,” Kate said. Then she said, “Did he tell you more? I told you more, too. I told you what I’d been.”

He closed his eyes; the darkness behind his eyes ached.

“I guess I am still,” her voice continued. “Though I don’t have to work at it any more, since I’ve got money. That came from men.” Again she spoke as though she were hitting him. She said, “I’m damned if I am ashamed of it. It is honest work and kills no one. What are you waiting for, a little country girl virgin?”

Now he tried to shake his head.

“Why, men marry whores,” she said. “Even here. But not you. And not me. There is nothing here at all for me, is there?” Her voice began to shake and he looked up at her and tried to speak, but she rushed on. “So I have been a whore by trade,” she said. “But I can love, and I can hate by nature. But you can’t. You just sit and stare in at yourself and worry everything every way so there is no time nor place for any of that. Is there?”

“Kate,” he said in a voice he could hardly recognize. “That is not so. You know well enough I have loved—”

“Don’t say that!” she broke in fiercely. Her face looked very red in the lamplight, and her black eyes glittered. “I have never heard you lie before and don’t start for me. I know you haven’t been to the French Palace,” she said, “because I asked.” She said it cruelly. “I wanted to know if you were waiting for a little country virgin or not. And I—”

“That’s not so, Kate!” he cried in anguish.

Slowly the lines of her face relaxed until it was as gentle and full of pity as that of the little madonna in her room. He had never seen it this way before. “No,” she said gently. “No, I guess it isn’t. I guess you thought going to a whore wasn’t right. And I guess you thought that about me, too.”

“Kate — I guess I knew you felt — kindly toward me. I kind of presumed you did. I’m not a fool. But Kate—” he said, and couldn’t go on.

“But Kate?” she said.

“Well, this is where I live.”

He waited for a long time, but she did not speak. When he looked up he saw the harsh lines around her mouth again. He heard the rustle of her garments as she moved; she clasped her hands before her, staring down at him, her eyes in shadow.

“Another thing,” he said. “You have been in the jail and seen those names scratched on the wall there.” He took a deep breath. “There was something Carl used to say,” he went on. “That there wasn’t a man with his name on there that didn’t either run or get killed. And Carl used to say who was he to think he was any different? And that he wouldn’t run. I think he even knew who was going to kill him.”

“I’ve got money, Deputy,” Kate said. “Do you want to come with me? Deputy, this town is going to die and there is no reason for anybody to die with it. I am asking you to take the stage to Bright’s City with me tomorrow. Out of here, out of the territory.”

“Kate—” he groaned.

“Do you want to, or not?”

“Yes, but Kate — I can’t, now.”

“Killed or run!” she cried. “Deputy, you can run with me. I have got six thousand dollars in the bank in Denver. We can—” She stopped, and her face twisted in anger and contempt, or grief. “What kind of a fool am I?” she said, more quietly. “To beg you. Deputy, you can’t give me anything I haven’t had a thousand times and better. I can give you what you’ve never had. But you will lie down and die instead. Do you want to die more?”