it now, there in that cabin.

She heard Ortez starting to get supper, and she sat up quickly. With
stern control she forced herself to seem composed and quiet, while
within her passions raged like a tornado. Self-contempt, wonder,
amazement, pity for her husband, for Lawrence, and hatred for Philip
Ortez swept round and round in her brain like a maelstrom.

She stepped through her curtain and said gaily: "You're preempting my
privilege, Philip."

He laughed. "I thought perhaps you were tired," he said.

"She ought to be," remarked Lawrence from his chair, and in her present
state she imagined in his voice a tenderness, a worry for her, and a
distrust of her.

She took up the kettle, and hung it on its hook in the fireplace. "I
never in my life imagined myself cooking over an open fire in this way,"
she said as she turned toward the little storeroom adjoining.

"You like it?" Philip asked carelessly.

She felt sure that his eyes had read her heart and that he was looking
toward the future, his future with the wanton mistress he had found.

She could have screamed, "I hate you! I hate you!" but she said only,
"It's great fun for a while; I wouldn't fancy it as a permanent thing."

"It surely must be different from the conveniences of your home."

"Rather," she laughed as she began cutting from the smoked meat that
hung in the storeroom.

Now it was Lawrence who was speaking. "I guess she'd surprise us if we
could supply her with a chafing-dish. I'd like to see her at work over
one in my studio with the bunch around waiting hungrily for results."

Would these men never stop saying things that made her want to scream?
What was the matter, that all at once the beauty of her day should be
smashed into a discolored memory of self-hatred? Was there nothing in
all the world but sordid thoughts of oneself and of men who, causing
them, said things to make them worse?

After they had eaten she went to bed as soon as possible, leaving the
men to smoke before the fire. She had pleaded weariness, and they had
laughingly told her to get to sleep. They were out there now, talking in
subdued tones so as not to disturb her--as if their voices did not ring
through her suffering mind like clarions of evil! What should they say
if she should suddenly spring before them and shout out her mad fancies?
For a moment she had the wildest of impulses to laugh aloud, then
suddenly she turned on her face as she recalled the emotion that