ounting and accelerating faculties within that were involuntarily
rising to meet some strange, nameless import. He felt it. He imagined
it would be the catastrophe of Ellen Jorth's calm acceptance of
Colter's proposition. But down in Jean's miserable heart lived
something that would not die. No mere words could kill it. How
poignant that moment of her silence! How terribly he realized that if
his intelligence and his emotion had believed her betraying words, his
soul had not!

But Ellen Jorth did not speak. Her brown head hung thoughtfully. Her
supple shoulders sagged a little.

"Ellen, what's happened to y'u?" went on Colter.

"All the misery possible to a woman," she replied, dejectedly.

"Shore I don't mean that way," he continued, persuasively. "I ain't
gainsayin' the hard facts of your life. It's been bad. Your dad was
no good.... But I mean I can't figger the change in y'u."

"No, I reckon y'u cain't," she said. "Whoever was responsible for your
make-up left out a mind--not to say feeling."

Colter drawled a low laugh.

"Wal, have that your own way. But how much longer are yu goin' to be
like this heah?"

"Like what?" she rejoined, sharply.

"Wal, this stand-offishness of yours?"

"Colter, I told y'u to let me alone," she said, sullenly.

"Shore. An' y'u did that before. But this time y'u're different....
An' wal, I'm gettin' tired of it."

Here the cool, slow voice of the Texan sounded an inflexibility before
absent, a timber that hinted of illimitable power.

Ellen Jorth shrugged her lithe shoulders and, slowly rising, she picked
up the little rifle and turned to step into the cabin.

"Colter," she said, "fetch my pack an' my blankets in heah."

"Shore," he returned, with good nature.

Jean saw Ellen Jorth lay the rifle lengthwise in a chink between two
logs and then slowly turn, back to the wall. Jean knew her then, yet
did not know her. The brown flash of her face seemed that of an older,
graver woman. His strained gaze, like his waiting mind, had expected
something, he knew not what--a hardened face, a ghost of beauty, a
recklessness, a distorted, bitter, lost expression in keeping with her
fortunes. But he had reckoned falsely. She did not look like that.
There was incalculable change, but the beauty remained, somehow
different. Her red lips were parted. Her brooding eyes, looking out
straight from under the level, dark brows, seemed sloe black and
wonderful with thei