en with an intensity of
bitterness that left an impression as hard as flint. The tone had set
her shuddering. Then the look in those cold blue eyes when at last she
had turned confronting them. No, there had been no mercy in them. No
mercy, she told herself, for--anybody.

At that moment she had known that the earth could hold no future peace
for her. She felt that Fate had passed sentence on her, and she was
powerless to stay its execution. Her husband demanded vengeance upon
the man who had accepted the price of his brother's blood.

For the moment she had been stunned. Then had risen up in her a
desperate courage. She would fight. She would fight for herself, she
would fight for the love which all unbidden, all undesired, had come to
her. Then, in the end, if defeat should overtake her, she would, yes,
she could, submit to the punishment his hand should mete out to her.

Strangely, from that moment her love for this man seemed to increase a
thousandfold. He grew in her heart a towering colossus of worship.
The primitive in her bowed down before his image ready to yield to his
lightest word, while, by every art, she was ready to cajole and foster
his love.

It was all she knew, understood. It was the woman in her who possessed
no other weapons of defense. She loved him, she desired him, then
nothing was too small to cling to with the wild hope of the drowning.
When the day came that he should turn and rend her soul she could
submit. But until that day she would cling to every straw that offered.

While the scenes through which they were passing preoccupied the man,
the silence of the wide plains left Elvine to her fears. The great
breadth of the world about her added to her hopelessness. And after a
silence which had become unduly protracted, she took refuge in talk for
which she had no real desire.

"It's beautiful, but--oppressive," she said, and the words were the
inspiration of genuine thought.

But the man was like one who has spent a world of love and devotion
upon carving a beautiful setting and is now about to complete his work
by securing in place the crowning jewel. He had no room for any
feeling of oppression. He shook his head.

"Say, Evie," he cried, "I just can't allow you the word 'oppressive.'
I just can't. Look--look right out there toward the hills we're
making. Take the colors as they heap up to the distance. Every shade,
I guess, from green to purple. It makes me feel