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 "Exactly that," she said coldly. "And now perhaps you will go away. I am grateful to you. I know what it cost you to come. I am sorry I have hurt you so. But what I have told you does not change things; nothing you can say will change anything."

But he made a desperate effort nevertheless. There could be a divorce, or the marriage could be annulled; that was done all the time. How was McNair to support her, if he could no longer ride? Take a cowboy off a horse and what was he? A field hand! She had married him out of some sort of romantic idea of him, but where was the romance now? And leave that out, if she liked. How would it work out, with her eternally trying to make him like the men she knew, and Tom dragging her down to the level of his own small-town girls.

"Like that Clare whatever her name was," he said contemptuously. "That's the sort he cares about and understands. Either he'll make you like her, or he'll go back to his own kind. Don't forget that. He's had a bad name about women, and that sticks to a man. You'll hold him for a while and then"

"That will be my affair, and his," she said, stony-faced. And turned and went out of the room.