m, lofty peaks, all
canopied over with angry, dusky, low-drifting clouds, horizon-wide,
smoky, and sulphurous. And as Ellen watched, hands pressed to her
breast, feeling incalculable relief in sight of this tempest and gulf
that resembled her soul, the sun burst out from behind the long bank of
purple cloud in the west and flooded the world there with golden
lightning.

"It is for me!" cried Ellen. "My mind--my heart--my very soul.... Oh, I
know! I know now! ... I love him--love him--love him!"

She cried it out to the elements. "Oh, I love Jean Isbel--an' my heart
will burst or break!"

The might of her passion was like the blaze of the sun. Before it all
else retreated, diminished. The suddenness of the truth dimmed her
sight. But she saw clearly enough to crawl into the pine thicket,
through the clutching, dry twigs, over the mats of fragrant needles to
the covert where she had once spied upon Jean Isbel. And here she lay
face down for a while, hands clutching the needles, breast pressed hard
upon the ground, stricken and spent. But vitality was exceeding strong
in her. It passed, that weakness of realization, and she awakened to
the consciousness of love.

But in the beginning it was not consciousness of the man. It was new,
sensorial life, elemental, primitive, a liberation of a million
inherited instincts, quivering and physical, over which Ellen had no
more control than she had over the glory of the sun. If she thought at
all it was of her need to be hidden, like an animal, low down near the
earth, covered by green thicket, lost in the wildness of nature. She
went to nature, unconsciously seeking a mother. And love was a birth
from the depths of her, like a rushing spring of pure water, long
underground, and at last propelled to the surface by a convulsion.

Ellen gradually lost her tense rigidity and relaxed. Her body
softened. She rolled over until her face caught the lacy, golden
shadows cast by sun and bough. Scattered drops of rain pattered around
her. The air was hot, and its odor was that of dry pine and spruce
fragrance penetrated by brimstone from the lightning. The nest where
she lay was warm and sweet. No eye save that of nature saw her in her
abandonment. An ineffable and exquisite smile wreathed her lips,
dreamy, sad, sensuous, the supremity of unconscious happiness. Over
her dark and eloquent eyes, as Ellen gazed upward, spread a luminous
film, a veil. She was looking intens