ustice, to speak her husband's name--"you think he remembers
you as something less than you were, than you are? Nella-Rose, he never
has! He did not understand, but always he has held you sacred. Whatever
blame there may have been--he took it all. It was because he could;
because it was possible for him to do so, that I loved him--honoured
him. Had it been otherwise, as truly as God hears me, I could not have
trusted him with my life. That--that marriage of yours and his was as
holy to him as, I now see, it was to you; and he, in his heart, has
always remembered you as he might a dear, dead--wife!"

Having spoken the words that wrung her heart, Lynda sank back exhausted.
Then she made her first--her only claim for herself.

"It was when everything was past and his new life began--his man's
life--that I entered in. He--he told me everything."

Nella-Rose bent over her sleeping child, and a wave of compassion
overflooded her thought.

"I--I must think!" she whispered, and closed her lovely eyes. What she
saw in the black space behind the burning lids no one could know, but
her tangled little life must have been part of it. She must have seen it
all--the bright, sunlit dream fading first into shadow, then into the
dun colour of the deserted hills. Burke Lawson must have stood boldly
forth, in his supreme unselfishness and Godlike power, as her
redeemer--her man! The gray eyes suddenly opened and they were calm and
still.

"I--I only wanted him--to remember me--like he once did," she faltered.
She was taking her last look at Truedale. "So long as he--he didn't
think me--less; I reckon I don't want him--to think of me as I
am--now."

"Suppose"--the desperate demand for full justice to Nella-Rose drove
Lynda on--"suppose it were in your power and mine to sweep everything
aside; suppose I--I went away. What would you do, Nella-Rose?"

Again the eyes closed. After a moment:

"I--would go back to--my man!"

"You mean that--as truly as God hears you?--you mean that, Nella-Rose?"

"Yes. But lil' Ann?"

Now that she had made the great decision about Truedale, there was still
"lil' Ann."

Lynda fought for mastery over the dread thing that was forcing its way
into her consciousness. Then something Nella-Rose was saying caught her
fevered thought.

"When I was a lil' child I used to dream that some day I would do a
mighty big thing--maybe this is it. I don't want to hurt his life
and--yours; I couldn't hurt my man and