so--the brooding, the
memories, the waiting for events scheduled in domestic routine--like
dinner--the--the terrible waiting for sleep! That is the worst. I tell
you, physical fatigue must help to save me--must help my love for Duane,
my love for you and Scott, my self-respect--what is left of it. This
rifle"--she held it out--"would turn into a nuisance if I let it. But I
won't; I can't; I've got to use everything to help me."

"You ride every day, don't you?" ventured the other woman timidly.

"Before breakfast. That helps. I wish I had a vicious horse to break. I
wish there was rough water where canoes ought not to go!" she exclaimed
fiercely. "I need something of that sort."

"You drove Scott's Blue Racer yesterday so fast that Felix came to me
about it," said Kathleen gently.

Geraldine laughed. "It couldn't go fast enough, dear; that was the only
trouble." Then, serious and wistful: "If I could only have Duane....
Don't be alarmed; I can't--yet. But if I only could have him now! You
see, his life is already very full; his work is absorbing him. It would
absorb me. I don't know anything about it technically, but it interests
me. If I could only have him now; think about him every second of the
day--to keep me from myself----"

She checked herself; suddenly her eyes filled, her lip quivered:

"I want him now!" she said desperately. "He could save me; I know it! I
want him now--his love, his arms to keep me safe at night! I want him to
love me--_love_ me! Oh, Kathleen! if I could only have him!"

A delicate colour tinted Kathleen's face; her ears shrank from the
girl's low-voiced cry, with its glimmer of a passion scarcely
understood.

Long, long, the memory of his embrace had tormented her--the feeling of
happy safety she had in his arms--the contact that thrilled almost past
endurance, yet filled her with a glorious and splendid strength--that
set wild pulses beating, wild blood leaping in her veins--that aroused
her very soul to meet his lips and heed his words and be what his behest
would have her.

And the memory of it now possessed her so that she stood straight and
slim and tall, trembling in the forest path, and her dark eyes looked
into Kathleen's with a strange, fiery glimmer of pride:

"I need him, but I love him too well to take him. Can I do more for him
than that?"

"Oh, my darling, my darling," said Kathleen brokenly, "if you believe
that he can save you--if you really feel that he can---