ture of that deep fire showed
through her eyes. She kept to herself, waiting, waiting for her fears to
be confirmed.

At times she broke out in wrath at the circumstances she had failed to
control, at herself, at Stewart.

"He might have learned from Ambrose!" she exclaimed, sick with a
bitterness she knew was not consistent with her pride. She recalled
Christine's trenchant exposition of Ambrose's wooing: "He tell me he
love me; he kees me; he hug me; he put me on his horse; he ride away
with me; he marry me."

Then in the next breath Madeline denied this insistent clamoring of
a love that was gradually breaking her spirit. Like a somber shadow
remorse followed her, shading blacker. She had been blind to a man's
honesty, manliness, uprightness, faith, and striving. She had been dead
to love, to nobility that she had herself created. Padre Marcos's grave,
wise words returned to haunt her. She fought her bitterness, scorned her
intelligence, hated her pride, and, weakening, gave up more and more to
a yearning, hopeless hope.

She had shunned the light of the stars as she had violently dismissed
every hinting suggestive memory of Stewart's kisses. But one night she
went deliberately to her window. There they shone. Her stars! Beautiful,
passionless as always, but strangely closer, warmer, speaking a kinder
language, helpful as they had never been, teaching her now that regret
was futile, revealing to her in their one grand, blazing task the
supreme duty of life--to be true.

Those shining stars made her yield. She whispered to them that they had
claimed her--the West claimed her--Stewart claimed her forever, whether
he lived or died. She gave up to her love. And it was as if he was there
in person, dark-faced, fire-eyed, violent in his action, crushing her to
his breast in that farewell moment, kissing her with one burning kiss of
passion, then with cold, terrible lips of renunciation.

"I am your wife!" she whispered to him. In that moment, throbbing,
exalted, quivering in her first sweet, tumultuous surrender to love, she
would have given her all, her life, to be in his arms again, to meet his
lips, to put forever out of his power any thought of wild sacrifice.

*****

And on the morning of the next day, when Madeline went out upon the
porch, Stillwell, haggard and stern, with a husky, incoherent word,
handed her a message from El Cajon. She read:

El Capitan Stewart captured by rebel soldiers in