. It was a
distant sound, and, to her fancy, it was the rapid beat of horse's
hoofs sweeping across the wide valley. But it died out. She had been
caught by the thought of the possibility of her husband's return,
suddenly, in the night. She pictured for one brief instant the
headlong race of the man to charge her with the crime of his brother's
life.

She saw that keen, stern face with its cold blue eyes and the grimly
tightened lips. She had seen some such expression there before, and
she knew there were depths within his soul which she had never probed,
and hoped that she might never have to probe.

It was the mystery of these unknown depths which had inspired her
passion. It was because of that cognizance of something unusual,
profound, in his personality that he had first become so completely
desirable. Then as she grew to know him, so she found she knew him
less, and desired to know him more. Her love and worship of him was of
the primitive. It was such as is the love of all women when inspired
by an emotion not untouched by fear.

So, when the sounds of hoof-beats broke the night silence, she became
panic-stricken, because such a return, at such an hour, could have but
one meaning.

Then the sounds passed, and her nerves steadied, and presently a
stirring night breeze rustled the lank grass. It came over the plain
toward her. It reached her window and fanned her cheeks with its chill
breath. Then it passed, sighing round an angle of the house. Then, in
its wake, came the plaintive dole of a scavenging coyote. The
combination, to her fancy, was an echo of her feelings. It was the
sigh of despair, and the cry of a lost soul.

Presently the drowse of utter weariness descended upon her. The dread
of thought remained heavily overshadowing, but a certain distortion
displayed the reaching of limits beyond which human power could not go,
even in suffering. It was a merciful nature asserting itself. Her
eyes closed, slowly, gently, with a drowsy helplessness. Once her
elbow slipped from the sill of the window and awoke her. A somnolent
thought that she would go to bed passed dully through her mind. But
she did not act upon it. She propped her head upon her hand once more,
and, in a moment, everything was forgotten.

She awoke with a start. There was no drowse in her wakefulness now.
Her eyes were wide, and her thoughts alert. The sensation of a blow, a
light, unforceful blow was still tingli