us spirit always, she had become softened with a meekness which
was not weakness but the dawning of understanding. She had struggled,
she had known fatigue after violence and the God who had made the Law
had ordained that after fatigue should come rest.

There was much she did not say which Sothern, having trod his own
burning path, could divine.

She had offered to David Drennen a fierce passion which he neither
could nor would accept. The hot breath of it had shaken her being,
seared through her breast, blinded her eyes. She had flung herself
upon Kootanie George, still seeing only Drennen through the blur of her
passion; she had awakened love in Kootanie George, the strong love of a
strong man, and she had not so much as seen it.

She had humiliated the Canadian before men. Had she fired the shot
because she loved him he would have been proud instead of ashamed. But
he had known that she had fired only because she wanted to hate David
Drennen.

Seeing dimly what she had lost only when it was gone from her she had
sought to bring it back by throwing herself at another man. Garcia had
made light love to her beautifully after the exquisite manner of his
kind, and had gone away when Ygerne had gone, with laughter in his gay
heart and his song upon his lips for the woman who had taken Drennen's
love. George had seen, had understood and his heart had grown still
harder.

But now, at last, Ernestine knew to the full what she had been offered
and had thrust aside. She had come to see in Kootanie George the
qualities of which a woman like her could be proud. She had come to
feel a strange sort of awe that George, who was no woman's man but
always a man's man, had loved her. And it had been given to her at
last to know that her passion for David Drennen had been as the passion
of the moth for the candle. A new love came into her heart, rising to
her throat, choking her; a love that was meek and devoted, that was now
as much a part of her as were her hands and feet; an emotion that was
the most unselfish, the most worthy and womanly she had ever felt. She
had followed Kootanie George; she had at last come up with him; and
now, George's back to her, she sat at her own little fire.

"Life is hard for us, Miss Dumont." Sothern laid his hand very gently
upon her shoulder and smiled into her face. "But, I think . . . at the
end . . . life is good."

"I have done everything wrong," she said slowly. "I have neve