ig and every needle of her
pine mattress seemed to have conspired to torture her. She tossed
about until she could no longer endure her bed; and in the middle of
the night she crept out of the tent, and sat, wrapped in a blanket,
before the smouldering embers of the fire. The hobbled horses grazed
not far away; a night bird twitted solitarily in the brush; and from
the depths of the forest came the scream of some savage creature out
on its kill. Against the star-crowded sky the peaks stood up cold and
impassive. What cared they? What did the world care? What did Philip
care?

For now she knew that she loved him. Yes, yes, she loved him! In her
heart she had known it from the beginning, since that meeting in the
Forbidden Pasture, had known it as one knows things without
acknowledgment. Her mind had acknowledged only the hundred reasons why
she should not, could not love him. He had repelled her; he had not
veiled his meaning, had not concealed his antagonism; he had told her
plainly, brutally almost, that he would not endure her presence, that
she must avoid his side of the Park.

Then she thought of Robert,--Robert, so devoted and so true. What was
she doing: throwing away his love that was so unselfishly, so
whole-heartedly laid at her feet? Had she been mad to flee from him?
Yes, mad! Pride rose to support the fondness and the admiration she
had felt for him. And so there ensued a struggle between the two fine
spirits that dwelt in her,--the proud little lady of the Fragonard and
the Viking with red hair.

The Viking won. Had not her father said to her, in those long talks
about her mother, that love is the only thing? And back she came, on
swiftest wings of passion, to Philip; and she was glad. She knew now
the meaning of her restlessness in the dark days in the unheeding
city; she knew whose voice had called, whose arms had held her, though
he was unaware. He needed her, though he did not know it. And she had
come to him, without understanding. Somewhere she had read a fugitive
bit of verse that had meant nothing then, and had been forgotten until
now, when it suddenly sang across the years and the spaces like a call
to courage:

"The wild wind bloweth
The cross of fire.
The wild heart knoweth
Its own desire."

The wild heart knoweth its own desire! She rose to her feet with a
singing and a resurrection of her