for protection, for salvation, for love, for
fulfillment. No denial, no doubt marred the white blaze of her
realization. From the instant that she had looked up into Jean Isbel's
dark face she had loved him. Only she had not known. She bowed now,
and bent, and humbly quivered under the mastery of something beyond her
ken. Thought clung to the beginnings of her romance--to the three
times she had seen him. Every look, every word, every act of his
returned to her now in the light of the truth. Love at first sight! He
had sworn it, bitterly, eloquently, scornful of her doubts. And now a
blind, sweet, shuddering ecstasy swayed her. How weak and frail seemed
her body--too small, too slight for this monstrous and terrible engine
of fire and lightning and fury and glory--her heart! It must burst or
break. Relentlessly memory pursued Ellen, and her thoughts whirled and
emotion conquered her. At last she quivered up to her knees as if
lashed to action. It seemed that first kiss of Isbel's, cool and
gentle and timid, was on her lips. And her eyes closed and hot tears
welled from under her lids. Her groping hands found only the dead
twigs and the pine boughs of the trees. Had she reached out to clasp
him? Then hard and violent on her mouth and cheek and neck burned
those other kisses of Isbel's, and with the flashing, stinging memory
came the truth that now she would have bartered her soul for them.
Utterly she surrendered to the resistlessness of this love. Her loss
of mother and friends, her wandering from one wild place to another,
her lonely life among bold and rough men, had developed her for violent
love. It overthrew all pride, it engendered humility, it killed hate.
Ellen wiped the tears from her eyes, and as she knelt there she swept
to her breast a fragrant spreading bough of pine needles. "I'll go to
him," she whispered. "I'll tell him of--of my--my love. I'll tell him
to take me away--away to the end of the world--away from heah--before
it's too late!"

It was a solemn, beautiful moment. But the last spoken words lingered
hauntingly. "Too late?" she whispered.

And suddenly it seemed that death itself shuddered in her soul. Too
late! It was too late. She had killed his love. That Jorth blood in
her--that poisonous hate--had chosen the only way to strike this noble
Isbel to the heart. Basely, with an abandonment of womanhood, she had
mockingly perjured her soul with a vile lie. She writhed