capacity for emotion
so utterly overwhelming.

Even now confusion, shame, fear were paramount. All she wanted was to
get away, -- get away and still her heart's wild beating, -- control the
strange tremor that possessed her, recover mind and sense and breath.

She drew her hand from her eyes and looked upon the man she had
attempted to kill, -- upon the young man who had wrestled her off her
feet and handcuffed her, -- and who had bathed her bleeding mouth with
sphagnum, -- and who had kissed her hands----

She was trembling so that she became frightened. The racket of the
brook in his ears safeguarded her in a measure. She bent over nearly
double, her rifle at a trail, and cautiously began the detour.

* * * * *

When at length the wide circle through the woods had been safely
accomplished and Eve was moving out through the thickening ranks of
tamarack, her heart, which seemed to suffocate her, quieted; and she
leaned against a shoulder of rock, strangely tired.

After a while she drew from her pocket _his_ handkerchief, and looked at
it. The square of cambric bore his initials, J.S. Blood from her lip
remained on it. She had not washed out the spots.

She put it to her lips again, mechanically. A faint odour of tobacco
still clung to it.

By every law of loyalty, pride, self-respect, she should have held this
man her enemy. Instead, she held his handkerchief against her lips, --
crushed it there suddenly through her skin from throat to hair.

Then, wearily, she lifted her head and looked out into the grey and
empty vista of her life, where the dreary years seemed to stretch like
milestones away, away into an endless waste.

She put the handkerchief into her pocket, shouldered her rifle, moved on
without looking about her, -- a mistake which only the emotion of the
moment could account for in a girl so habituated to caution, -- for she
had gone only a few rods before a man's strident voice halted her:

"Halte la! Crosse en air!"

"Drop that rifle!" came another voice from behind her. "You're covered!
Throw your gun to the ground!"

She stood as though paralysed. To the right and left she heard people
trampling through the thicket toward her.

"Down with that gun, damn you!" repeated the voice, breathless from
running. All around her men came floundering and crashing toward her
through the undergrowth. She could see some of them.

As she stopped to place her rifle on the dead leaves, she