ore than once the idea was advanced that
an elaborate trick had been concocted. Upon general discussion this idea
gained ground. Madeline did not combat it, because she saw it tended to
a less perturbed condition of mind among her guests. Castleton for once
proved that he was not absolutely obtuse, and helped along the idea.

They sat talking in low voices until a late hour. The incident now began
to take on the nature of Helen's long-yearned-for adventure. Some of the
party even grew merry in a subdued way. Then, gradually, one by one they
tired and went to bed. Helen vowed she could not sleep in a place where
there were bats and crawling things. Madeline fancied, however, that
they all went to sleep while she lay wide-eyed, staring up at the black
bulge of overhanging rock and beyond the starry sky.

To keep from thinking of Stewart and the burning anger he had caused her
to feel for herself, Madeline tried to keep her mind on other things.
But thought of him recurred, and each time there was a hot commotion
in her breast hard to stifle. Intelligent reasoning seemed out of her
power. In the daylight it had been possible for her to be oblivious to
Stewart's deceit after the moment of its realization. At night, however,
in the strange silence and hovering shadows of gloom, with the speaking
stars seeming to call to her, with the moan of the wind in the pines,
and the melancholy mourn of coyotes in the distance, she was not able to
govern her thought and emotion. The day was practical, cold; the night
was strange and tense. In the darkness she had fancies wholly unknown to
her in the bright light of the sun. She battled with a haunting thought.
She had inadvertently heard Nels's conversation with Stewart; she had
listened, hoping to hear some good news or to hear the worst; she had
learned both, and, moreover, enlightenment on one point of Stewart's
complex motives. He wished to spare her any sight that might offend,
frighten, or disgust her. Yet this Stewart, who showed a fineness of
feeling that might have been wanting even in Boyd Harvey, maintained a
secret rendezvous with that pretty, abandoned Bonita. Here always
the hot shame, like a live, stinging, internal fire, abruptly ended
Madeline's thought. It was intolerable, and it was the more so because
she could neither control nor understand it. The hours wore on, and at
length, as the stars began to pale and there was no sound whatever, she
fell asleep.

She was c