softened in the least as to his intentions. This
weather-vane veering of hers bewildered him, obsessed him with its
possibilities. He had the look of a man who was divided between love
of her and hate, whose love demanded a return, but whose hate required
a proof of her abasement. Not proof of surrender, but proof of her
shame! The ignominy of him thirsted for its like. He could grind her
beauty under his heel, but he could not soften to this feminine
inscrutableness.

And whatever was the truth of Ellen Jorth in this moment, beyond
Colter's gloomy and stunted intelligence, beyond even the love of Jean
Isbel, it was something that held the balance of mastery. She read
Colter's mind. She dropped the torn blouse from her hand and stood
there, unashamed, with the wave of her white breast pulsing, eyes black
as night and full of hell, her face white, tragic, terrible, yet
strangely lovely.

"Take me away," she whispered, stretching one white arm toward him,
then the other.

Colter, even as she moved, had leaped with inarticulate cry and radiant
face to meet her embrace. But it seemed, just as her left arm flashed
up toward his neck, that he saw her bloody hand and wrist. Strange how
that checked his ardor--threw up his lean head like that striking bird
of prey.

"Blood! What the hell!" he ejaculated, and in one sweep he grasped
her. "How'd yu do that? Are y'u cut? ... Hold still."

Ellen could not release her hand.

"I scratched myself," she said.

"Where?... All that blood!" And suddenly he flung her hand back with
fierce gesture, and the gleams of his yellow eyes were like the points
of leaping flames. They pierced her--read the secret falsity of her.
Slowly he stepped backward, guardedly his hand moved to his gun, and
his glance circled and swept the interior of the cabin. As if he had
the nose of a hound and sight to follow scent, his eyes bent to the
dust of the ground before the door. He quivered, grew rigid as stone,
and then moved his head with exceeding slowness as if searching through
a microscope in the dust--farther to the left--to the foot of the
ladder--and up one step--another--a third--all the way up to the loft.
Then he whipped out his gun and wheeled to face the girl.

"Ellen, y'u've got your half-breed heah!" he said, with a terrible
smile.

She neither moved nor spoke. There was a suggestion of collapse, but
it was only a change where the alluring softness of her hardened into