Tarleton Collier

“ Joe's eyes were hungry. Joe leaned forward upon his stiffened arms, and stared at her like a wistful dog.
"I don't know who you are," he whispered. "I don't know who you are."
"I am whoever you want me to be," she said.
"I'll call you Sadie," he said.
"Sadie?" Her lids drooped, veiling her eyes, but their narrow glimmer was keenly alive.
"Yes, there is a girl—"
Between two words she was close before him at the edge of the rock.
"I am yours," she said in a fierce, low voice. "What do you care for any girl? I am all woman, and you have me. What do you care for the world? You have me." ”

“ Her smile, merrier now, was accompanied by a sound that might have been the gurgle of a little whirlpool in the rapids, or it might have been a low note of laughter.
"You didn't mean it, then, that you love me," she chided, coming nearer. It was not by a step that she moved, or by any perceptible effort. The space between them all at once was lessened, nothing else.
Joe had lost his careless air and posture. He was on his knees, a fury in his words.
"I didn’t mean it? You can't say that. I have become less than a man, I love you so. ”

“ What are those men in the camp to you, they and their rules? You will not drink. . . . yet I give you. . . . this. . . ."
Her lips met his in an eternity of giving and taking.
"No" he said again, but his voice quivered and broke, with the plain message of surrender.
With a little cry, she knelt at the edge of the pool, her arms still about him so that he was forced to kneel with her. She plunged her hands into the water, and lifted them to him with their silver freight. ”