"Well, you have paid it. You
have given me a book to read which I will keep always. And I give you a
receipt in full for your debt."
"I don't know about any book," he answered dazedly. "I want to marry you
right away."
"I am sorry, but it is not necessary," she replied suggestively. Her face
was very pale now.
"But I want to. It ain't a debt. That was only a way of putting it. I
want to make you my wife. I got some position, and I can make the West
sit up, and look at you and be glad."
Suddenly her anger flared out, low and vivid and fierce, but her words
were slow and measured. "There is no reason why I should marry you--not
one. You offer me marriage as a prince might give a penny to a beggar. If
my mother were not an Indian woman, you would not have taken it all as a
matter of course. But my father was a white man, and I am a white man's
daughter, and I would rather marry an Indian, who would think me the best
thing there was in the light of the sun, than marry you. Had I been pure
white you would not have been so sure, you would have asked, not offered.
I am not obliged to you. You ought to go to no woman as you came to me.
See, the storm has stopped. You will be quite safe going back now.
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