d ended. Something
must happen. That was the burden of her hope--as vague as a child's
hope. She would set no time, nor would she name the thing. But come it
must, and she could wait.

When Beulah Pierce rode by on his way from Pagosa and left their mail
one afternoon, she felt no eagerness about it. There could be nothing so
soon, she was sure. Virginia brought her some letters and read aloud one
from the aunt at Kensington. Then Mrs. Laithe looked through her own
letters and found one from Ewing. She did not open it, but rose after a
few moments, and walked swiftly over to the lake camp. Only there,
alone, could she trust herself.

She read the thing staringly, haltingly, testing each phrase as if it
were worded in some strange tongue.

"I can tell you now what I came for," the letter ran, "because the thing
will be done before this letter can reach you. It's a thing you want
done, but if you had known I meant to do it you would have tried to
prevent me, and that would only have distressed us both. But now, when
it is all over, you will see that I was the one person in the world to
do it for you. Think if you had killed him yourself that night, the pain
you would have brought to yourself and to others. It wasn't a woman's
work. I would have done it for you then, but I owed him money. I
couldn't kill him till I had paid that.

"I used to dream of doing things for you always, many things, big and
little, but it has turned out that I can do only this. So won't you try
to believe that I am putting all my heart into it for you, all that
thing I would have tried to show you if it had been scattered over the
rest of our lives? I must put it all into this one act.

"Ben seemed to suspect that such affairs could be managed here with the
informality that often marks them in the San Juan, but you and I know
better. I cannot expect to return, nor to see you again. Yet I shall see
you always; see no one else--while they let me see at all. We must take
life as it falls, do the next thing without complaining, even if it is
the hardest thing. And be sure of this--I shall do it so quickly that he
will have no chance to tell me anything. He will not even speak your
name. Afterwards you can have this to remember, that I did it gladly,
knowing what the consequences would be. I hope that will be, in time,
the happiness to you that it is to me. It is enough for me."

Over and over she read it, and at last she mastered it--all the hor