XXXII XXXII Afterward Kate took Honora down to the sea. They found a little house that fairly bathed its feet in the surf, and here they passed the days very quietly, at least to outward seeming. The Pacific thundered in upon them; they could hear the winds, calling and calling with an immemorial invitation; they knew of the little jewelled islands that lay out in the seas and of the lands of eld on the far, far shore; and they dreamed strange dreams. Sitting in the twilight, watching the light reluctantly leave the sea, they spoke of many things. They spoke most of all of women, and it sometimes seemed, as they sat there,--one at the doorway of the House of Life and one in a shaded inner chamber,--as if the rune of women came to them from their far sisters: from those in their harems, from others in the blare of commercial, Occidental life; from those in chambers of pain; from those freighted with the poignant burdens which women bear in their bodies and in their souls. As the darkness deepened, they grew unashamed and then reticences fell from them. The eternally flowing sea, the ever-recurrent night gave them courage, though they were women, to speak the truth. "When I found how deeply I loved David," said Honora, "and that I could serve him, too, by marrying him, I would no more have put the idea of marriage with him out of my mind than I would have cast away a hope of heaven if I had seen that shining before me. I would no more have turned from it than I would have turned from food, if I had been starving; or water after I had been thirsting in the desert. Why, Kate, to marry him was inevitable! The bird doesn't think when it sings or the bud when it flowers. It does what it was created to do. I married David the same way." "I understand," said Kate. They sat on their little low, sand-swept balcony, facing the sea. The rising tide filled the world with its soft and indescribable cadence. The stars came out into the sky according to their rank--the greatest first, and after them the less, and the less no more lacking in beauty than the great. All was as it should be--all was ordered--all was fit and wonderful. "So," went on Honora, after a silence which the sea filled in with its low harmonies, "if you loved Karl--" "Wait!" said Kate. So Honora waited. Another silence fell. Then Kate spoke brokenly. "If to feel when I am with him that I have reached my home; if to suffer a strangeness even with myself, and to feel less familiar with myself than with him, is to love, then I love him, Honora. If to want to work with him, and to feel there could be no exultation like overcoming difficulties with him, is love, then truly I love him. If just to see him, at a distance, enriches the world and makes the stream of time turn from lead to gold is anything in the nature of love, then I am his lover. If to long to house with him, to go by the same name that he does, to wear him, so to speak, carved on my brow, is to love, then I do." "Then I foresee that you will be one of the happiest women in the world." "No! No; you mustn't say that. Aren't there other things than love, Honora,--better things than selfish delight?" "My dear, you have no call to distress yourself about the occult meanings of that word 'selfish.' Unselfish people--or those who mean to be so--contrive, when they refuse to follow the instincts of their hearts, to cause more suffering even than the out-and-out selfish ones." "But I have an opportunity to serve thousands--maybe hundreds of thousands of human beings. I can set in motion a movement which may have a more lasting effect upon my country than any victory ever gained by it on a field of battle; and perhaps in time the example set by this land will be followed by others. Dare I face that mystic, inner ME and say: 'I choose my man, I give him all my life, and I resign my birthright of labor. For this personal joy I refuse to be the Sister of the World; I let the dream perish; I hinder a great work'? Oh, Honora, I want him, I want him! But am I for that reason to be false to my destiny?" "You want celebrity!" said Honora with sudden bitterness. "You want to go to Washington, to have your name numbered among the leading ones of the nation; you are not willing to spend your days in the solitude of Williston Ranch as wife to its master." "I will not say that you are speaking falsely, but I think you know you are setting out only a little part of the truth. Admit it, Honora." Honora sighed heavily. "Oh, yes," she said at length, "I do admit it. You must forgive me, Kate. It seems so easy for you two to be happy that I can't help feeling it blasphemous for you to be anything else. If it were an ordinary marriage or an ordinary separation, I shouldn't feel so agonized over it. But you and Karl--such mates--the only free spirits I know! How you would love! It would be epic. And I should rejoice that you were living in that savage world instead of in a city. You two would need room--like great beautiful buildings. Who would wish to see you in the jumble of a city? With you to aid him, Karl may become a distinguished man. Your lives would go on together, widening, widening--" "Oh!" interrupted Kate with a sharp ejaculation; "we'll not talk of it any more, Honora. You must not think because I cannot marry him that he will always be unhappy. In time he will find another woman--" "Kate! Will you find another man?" "You know I shall not! After Wander? Any man would be an anticlimax to me after him." "Can you suspect him of a passion or a fealty less than your own? If you refuse to marry him, I believe you will frustrate a great purpose of Nature. Why, Kate, it will be a crime against Love. The thought as I feel it means more--oh, infinitely more--than I can make the words convey to you; but you must think them over, Kate,--I beg you to think them over!" In the darkness, Kate heard Honora stealing away to her room. So she was alone, and the hour had come for her decision. "'Bitter, alas,'" she quoted to the rising trouble of the sea, '"the sorrow of lonely women.'" The distillation of that strange duplex soul, Fiona Macleod, was as a drop of poisoned truth upon her parched tongue. "We who love are those who suffer; We who suffer most are those who most do love." She went down upon the sands. The tongues of the sea came up and lapped her feet. The winds of the sea enfolded her in an embrace. For the first time in her life, freely, without restraint, bravely, as sometime she might face God, she confronted the idea of Love. And a secret, wonderful knowledge came to her--the knowledge of lovely spiritual ecstasies, the realization of rich human delights. Sorrow and cruel loss might be on their way, but Joy was hers now. She feigned that Karl was waiting for her a little way on in the warm darkness--on, around that scimitar-shaped bend of the beach. She chose to believe that he was running to meet her, his eyes aflame, his great arms outstretched; she thrilled to the rain of his kisses; she thought those stars might hear the voice with which he shouted, "Kate!" Then, calmer, yet as if she had run a race, panting, palpitant, she seated herself on the sands. She let her imagination roam through the years. She saw the road of life they would take together; how they would stand on peaks of lofty desire, in sunlight; how, unfaltering, they would pace tenebrous valleys. Always they would be together. Their laughter would chime and their tears would fall in unison. Where one failed, the other would redeem; where one doubted, the other would hope. They would bear their children to be the vehicle of their ideals--these fresh new creatures, born of their love, would be trained to achieve what they, their parents, had somehow missed. Then her bolder thought died. She, who had forced herself so relentlessly to face the world as a woman faces it, with the knowledge and the courage of maturity, felt her wisdom slip from her. She was a girl, very lonely, facing a task too large for her, needing the comfort of her lover's word. She stretched herself upon the sand, face downward, weeping, because she was afraid of life--because she was wishful for the joy of woman and dared not take it. "Have you decided?" asked Honora in the morning. "I think so," answered Kate. Honora scrutinized the face of her friend. "Accept," she said, "my profound commiseration." Her tone seemed to imply that she included contempt. After this, there was a change in Honora's attitude toward her. Kate felt herself more alone than she ever had been in her life. It was as if she had been cast out into a desert--a sandy plain smitten with the relentless Sun of Life, and in it was no house of refuge, no comfortable tree, no waters of healing. No, nor any other soul. Alone she walked there, and the only figures she saw were those of the mirage. It gave her a sort of relief to turn her face eastward and to feel that she must traverse the actual desert, and come at the end to literal combat. XXXIII Two dragons, shedding fire, had paused midway of the desert. One was the Overland Express racing from Los Angeles to Kansas City; its fellow was headed for the west. Both had halted for fuel and water and the refreshment of the passengers. The dusk was gathering over the illimitable sandy plain, and the sun, setting behind wind-blown buttes, wore a sinister glow. By its fantastic light the men and women from the trains paced back and forth on the wide platform, or visited the luxurious eating-house, where palms and dripping waters, roses and inviting food bade them forget that they were on the desert. Kate and Honora had dined and were walking back and forth in the deep amber light. "Such a world to live in," cried Kate admiringly, pressing Honora's arm to her side. "Do you know, of all the places that I might have imagined as desirable for residence, I believe I like our old earth the best!" She was in an inconsequential mood, and Honora indulged her with smiling silence. "I couldn't have thought of a finer desert than this if I had tried," she went on gayly. "And this wicked saffron glow is precisely the color to throw on it. What a mistake it would have been if some supernal electrician had dropped a green or a blue spot-light on the scene! Now, just hear that fountain dripping and that ground-wind whispering! Who wouldn't live in the arid lands? It's all as it should be. So are you, too, aren't you, Honora? You've forgiven me, too, I know you have; and you're getting stronger every day, and making ready for happiness, aren't you?" She leaned forward to look in her companion's face. "Oh, yes, Kate," said Honora. "It really is as it should be with me. I'm looking forward, now, to what is to come. To begin with, there are the children shining like little stars at the end of my journey; and there's the necessity of working for them. I'm glad of that--I'm glad I have to work for them. Perhaps I shall be offered a place at the University of Wisconsin. I think I should be if I gave any indication that I had such a desire. The president and I are old friends. Oh, yes, indeed, I'm very thankful that I'm able to look forward again with something like expectancy--" The words died on her lips. She was arrested as if an angry god had halted her. Kate, startled, looked up. Before them, marble-faced and hideously abashed,--yet beautiful with an insistent beauty,--stood Mary Morrison, like Honora, static with pain. It seemed as if it must be a part of that fantastic, dream-like scene. So many visions were born of the desert that this, not unreasonably, might be one. But, no, these two women who had played their parts in an appalling drama, were moving, involuntarily, as it seemed, nearer to each other. For a second Kate thought of dragging Honora away, till it came to her by some swift message of the spirit that Honora did not wish to avoid this encounter. Perhaps it seemed to her like a fulfillment--the last strain of a wild and dissonant symphony. It was the part of greater kindness to drop her arm and stand apart. "Shall we speak, Mary," said Honora at length. "Or shall we pass on in silence?" "It isn't for me to say," wavered the other. "Any way, it's too late for words to matter." "Yes," agreed Honora. "Quite too late." They continued to stare at each other--so like, yet so unlike. It was Honora's face which was ravaged, though Mary had sinned the sin. True, pallor and pain were visible in Mary's face, even in the disguising light of that strange hour and place, but back of it Kate perceived her indestructible frivolity. She surmised how rapidly the scenes of Mary's drama would succeed each other; how remorse would yield to regret, regret to diminishing grief, grief to hope, hope to fresh adventures with life. Here in all verity was "the eternal feminine," fugitive, provocative, unspiritualized, and shrinking the one quality, fecundity, which could have justified it. But Honora was speaking, and her low tones, charged with a mortal grief, were audible above the tramping of many feet, the throbbing of the engines, and the talking and the laughter. "If you had stayed to die with him," she was saying, "I could have forgiven you everything, because I should have known then that you loved him as he hungered to be loved." "He wouldn't let me," Mary wailed. "Honestly, Honora--" "Wouldn't let you!" The scorn whipped Mary's face scarlet. "Nobody wants to die, Honora!" pleaded the other. "You wouldn't yourself, when it came to it." A child might have spoken so. The puerility of the words caused Honora to check her speech. She looked with a merciless scrutiny at that face in which the dimples would come and go even at such a moment as this. The long lashes curled on the cheeks with unconscious coquetry; the eyes, that had looked on horrors, held an intrinsic brilliance. The Earth itself, with its perpetual renewals, was not more essentially expectant than this woman. Honora's amazement at her cousin's hedonism gave way to contempt for it. "Oh," she groaned, "to have had the power to destroy a great man and to have no knowledge of what you've done! To have lived through all that you have, and to have got no soul, after all!" She had stepped back as if to measure the luscious opulence of Mary's form with an eye of passionate depreciation. "Stop her, Miss Barrington," cried Mary, seizing Kate's arm. "There's no use in all this, and people will overhear. Can't you take her away?" She might have gazed at the Medusa's head as she gazed at Honora's. "Come," said Kate to Honora. "As Miss Morrison says, there's no use in all this." "If David and I did wrong, it was quite as much Honora's fault as mine, really it was," urged "Blue-eyed Mary," her childish voice choking. Kate shook her hand off and looked at her from a height. "Don't dare to discuss that," she warned. "Don't dare!" She threw her arm around Honora. "Do come," she pleaded. "All this will make you worse again." "I don't wish you ill," continued Honora, seeming not to hear and still addressing herself to Mary. "I know you will live on in luxury somehow or other, and that good men will fetch and carry for you. You exude an essence which they can no more resist than a bee can honey. I don't blame you. That's what you were born for. But don't think that makes a woman of you. You never can be a woman! Women have souls; they suffer; they love and work and forget themselves; they know how to go down to the gates of death. You don't know how to do any of those things, now, do you?" She had grown terrible, and her questions had the effect of being spoken by some daemonic thing within her--something that made of her mouth a medium as the priestesses did of the mouths of the ancient oracles. "Miss Barrington," shuddered Mary, "I'm trying to hold on to myself, but I don't think I can do it much longer. Something is hammering at my throat. I feel as if I were being strangled--" she was choking in the grasp of hysteria. Kate drew Honora away with a determined violence. "She'll be screaming horribly in a minute," she said. "You don't want to hear that, do you?" Honora gave one last look at the miserable girl. "Of course, you know," she said, throwing into her words an intensity which burned like acid, "that he did not die for you, Mary. He died to save his soul alive. He died to find himself--and me. Just that much I have to have you know." At that Kate forced her to go into the Pullman, and seated her by the window where the rising wind, bringing its tale of eternal solitude, eternal barrenness, could fan her cheek. A gentleman who had been pacing the platform alone approached Mary and seemed to offer her assistance with anxious solicitude. She drooped upon his arm, and as she passed beneath the window the odor of her perfumes stole to Honora's nostrils. "How dare she walk beneath my window?" Honora demanded of Kate. "Isn't she afraid I may kill her?" "No, I don't think she is, Honora. Why should she suspect anything ignoble of you?" Silence fell. A dull golden star blossomed in the West. "All aboard! All aboard!" called the conductors. The people began straggling toward their trains, laughing their farewells. "Hope I'll meet you again sometime!" "East or West, home's the best." "You're sure you're not going on my train?" "Me for God's country! You'll find nothing but fleas and flubdub on the Coast." "You'll be back again next year, just the same. Everybody comes back." "All aboard! All aboard!" "God willing," said Honora, "I shall never see her again." Suddenly she ceased to be primitive and became a civilized woman with a trained conscience and artificial solicitude. "How do you suppose she's going to live, Kate? She had no money. Will David have made any arrangement for her? Oughtn't I to see to that?" "You are neither to kill nor pension her," said Kate angrily. "Keep still, Honora." The fiery worms became active, and threshed their way across the fast-chilling and silent plain. On the eastbound one two women sat in heavy reverie. On the westbound one a group of solicitous ladies and gentlemen gathered about a golden-haired daughter of California offering her sal volatile, claret, brandy-and-water. She chose the claret and sipped it tremblingly. Its deep hue answered the glow in the great ruby in her ring. By a chance her eye caught it and she turned the jewel toward her palm. "A superb stone," commented one of the kindly group. "You purchased it abroad?" The inquiry was meant to distract her thoughts. It did not quite succeed. She put the wine from her and covered her face with her hands, for suddenly she was assailed by a memory of the burning kisses with which that gem had been placed upon her finger by lips now many fathoms beneath the surface of the sun-warmed world. XXXIV Kate and Honora left the train at the station of Wander, and the man for whom it was named was there to meet them. If it was summer with the world, it was summer with him, too. Some new plenitude had come to him since Kate had seen him last. His full manhood seemed to be realized. A fine seriousness invested him--a seriousness which included, the observer felt sure, all imaginable fit forms of joy. Clothed in gray, save for the inevitable sombrero, clean-shaven, bright-eyed, capable, renewed with hope, he took both women with a protecting gesture into his embrace. The three rejoiced together in that honest demonstration which seems permissible in the West, where social forms and fears have not much foothold. They talked as happily of little things as if great ones were not occupying their minds. To listen, one would have thought that only "little joys" and small vexations had come their way. It would be by looking into their faces that one could see the marks of passion--the passion of sorrow, of love, of sacrifice. As they came out of the piñon grove, Honora discovered her babies. They were in white, fresh as lilies, or, perhaps, as little angels, well beloved of heavenly mothers; and they came running from the house, their golden hair shining like aureoles about their eager faces. Their sandaled feet hardly touched the ground, and, indeed, could they have been weighed at that moment, it surely had been found that they had become almost imponderable because of the ethereal lightness of their spirits. Their arms were outstretched; their eyes burning like the eyes of seraphs. "Stop!" cried Honora to Karl in a choking voice. He drew up his restless, home-bound horses, and she leaped to the ground. As she ran toward her little ones on swift feet, the two who watched her were convinced that she had regained her old-time vigor, and had acquired an eloquence of personality which never before had been hers. She gathered her treasures in her arms and walked with them to the house. Kate had not many minutes to wait in the living-room before Wander joined her. It was a long room, with triplicate, lofty windows facing the mountains which wheeled in majestic semicircle from north to west. At this hour the purple shadows were gathering on them, and great peace and beauty lay over the world. There was but one door to this room and Wander closed it. "I may as well know my fate now," he said. "I've waited for this from the moment I saw you last. Are you going to be my wife, Kate?" He stood facing her, breathing rather heavily, his face commanded to a tense repose. "My answer is 'no,'" cried Kate, holding out her hands to him. "I love you as my life, and my answer is 'no.'" He took the hands she had extended. "Kiss me!" He gathered her into his arms, and upon her welcoming lips he laid his own in such a kiss as a man places upon but one woman's lips. "Now, what is your answer?" he breathed after a time. "Tell me your answer now, you much-loved woman--tell it, beloved." She kissed his brow and his eyes; he felt her tears upon his cheeks. "You know all that I have thought and felt," she said; "you know--for I have written--what my life may be. Do you ask me to let it go and to live here in this solitude with you?" "Yes, by heaven," he said, his eyes blazing, "I ask it." Some influence had gone out from them which seemed to create a palpitant atmosphere of delight in which they stood. It was as if the spiritual essence of them, mingling, had formed the perfect fluid of the soul, in which it was a privilege to live and breathe and dream. "I am so blessed in you," whispered Karl, "so completed by you, that I cannot let you go, even though you go on to great usefulness and great goodness. I tell you, your place is here in my home. It is safe here. I have seen you standing on a precipice, Kate, up there in the mountain. I warned you of its danger; you told me of its glory. But I repeat my warning now, for I see you venturing on to that precipice of loneliness and fame on which none but sad and lonely women stand." "Oh, I know what you say is true, Karl. I mean to do my work with all the power there is in me, and I shall be rejoicing in that and in Life--it's in me to be glad merely that I'm living. But deep within my heart I shall, as you say, be both lonely and sad. If there's any comfort in that for you--" "No, there's no comfort at all for me in that, Kate. Stay with me, stay with me! Be my wife. Why, it's your destiny." Kate crossed the room as if she would move beyond that aura which vibrated about him and in which she could not stand without a too dangerous delight. She was very pale, but she carried her head high still--almost defiantly. "I mean to be the mother to many, many children, Karl," she said in a voice which thrilled with sorrow and pride and a strange joy. "To thousands and thousands of children. But for the Idea I represent and the work I mean to do they would be trampled in the dust of the world. Can't you see that I am called to this as men are called to honorable services for their country? This is a woman's form of patriotism. It's a higher one than the soldier's, I think. It's come my way to be the banner-carrier, and I'm glad of it. I take my chance and my honor just as you would take your chance and your honor. But I could resign the glory, Karl, for your love, and count it worth while." "Kate--" "But the thing to which I am faithful is my opportunity for great service. Come with me, Karl, my dear. Think how we could work together in Washington--think what such a brain and heart as yours would mean to a new cause. We'd lose ourselves--and find ourselves--laboring for one of the kindest, lovingest ideas the hard old world has yet devised. Will you come and help me, Karl, man?" He moved toward her, his hands outspread with a protesting gesture. "You know that all my work is here, Kate. This is my home, these mines are mine, the town is mine. It is not only my own money which is invested, but the money of other men--friends who have trusted me and whose prosperity depends upon me." "Oh, but, Karl, aren't there ways of arranging such things? You say I am dear to you--transfer your interests and come with me--Karl!" Her voice was a pleader's, yet it kept its pride. "Kate! How can I? Do you want me to be a supplement to you--a hanger-on? Don't you see that you would make me ridiculous?" "Would I?" said Kate. "Does it seem that way to you? Then you haven't learned to respect me, after all." "I worship you," he cried. Kate smiled sadly. "I know," she said, "but worship passes--" "No--" he flung out, starting toward her. But she held him back with a gesture. "You have stolen my word," she said with an accent of finality. "'No'" is the word you force me to speak. I am going on to Washington in the morning, Karl. They heard the children running down the hall and pounding on the door with their soft fists. When Kate opened to them, they clambered up her skirts. She lifted them in her arms, and Karl saw their sunny heads nestling against her dark one. As she left the room, moving unseeingly, she heard the hard-wrung groan that came from his lips. A moment later, as she mounted the stairs, she saw him striding up the trail which they, together, had ascended once when the sun of their hope was still high. She did not meet him again that day. She and Honora ate their meals in silence, Honora dark with disapproval, Kate clinging to her spar of spiritual integrity. If that "no" thundered in Karl's ears the night through while he kept the company of his ancient comforters the mountains, no less did it beat shatteringly in the ears of the woman who had spoken it. "No," to the deep and mystic human joys; "no" to the most holy privilege of women; "no" to light laughter and a dancing heart; "no" to the lowly, satisfying labor of a home. For her the steep path, alone; for her the precipice. From it she might behold the sunrise and all the glory of the world, but no exalted sense of duty or of victory could blind her to its solitude and to its danger. Yet now, if ever, women must be true to the cause of liberty. They had been, through all the ages, willing martyrs to the general good. Now it was laid upon them to assume the responsibilities of a new crusade, to undertake a fresh martyrdom, and this time it was for themselves. Leagued against them was half--quite half--of their sex. Vanity and prettiness, dalliance and dependence were their characteristics. With a shrug of half-bared shoulders they dismissed all those who, painfully, nobly, gravely, were fighting to restore woman's connection with reality--to put her back, somehow, into the procession; to make, by new methods, the "coming lady" as essential to the commonwealth as was the old-time châtelaine before commercialism filched her vocations and left her the most cultivated and useless of parasites. Oh, it was no little thing for which she was fighting! Kate tried to console herself with that. If she passionately desired to create an organization which should exercise parental powers over orphaned or poorly guarded children, still more did she wish to set an example of efficiency for women, illustrating to them with how firm a step woman might tread the higher altitudes of public life, making an achievement, not a compromise, of labor. Moreover, no other woman in the country had at present had an opportunity that equaled her own. Look at it how she would, throb as she might with a woman's immemorial nostalgia for a true man's love, she could not escape the relentless logic of the situation. It was not the hour for her to choose her own pleasure. She must march to battle leaving love behind, as the heroic had done since love and combat were known to the world. XXXV Morning came. She was called early that she might take the train for the East, and arising from her sleepless bed she summoned her courage imperatively. She determined that, however much she might suffer from the reproaches of her inner self,--that mystic and hidden self which so often refuses to abide by the decisions of the brain and the conscience,--she would not betray her falterings. So she was able to go down to the breakfast-room with an alert step and a sufficiently gallant carriage of the head. Honora was there, as pale as Kate herself, and she did not scruple to turn upon her departing guest a glance both regretful and forbidding. Kate looked across the breakfast-table at her gloomy aspect. "Honora," she said with some exasperation, "you've walked your path, and it wasn't the usual one, now, was it? But I stood fast for your right to be unusual, didn't I? Then, when the whole scheme of things went to pieces and you were suffering, I didn't lay your misfortune to the singularity of your life. I knew that thousands and thousands of women, who had done the usual thing and chosen the beaten way, had suffered just as much as you. I tried to give you a hand up--blunderingly, I suppose, but I did the best I could. Of course, I'm a beast for reminding you of it. But what I want to know is, why you should be looking at me with the eyes of a stony-hearted critic because I'm taking the hardest road for myself. You don't suppose I'd do it without sufficient reason, do you? Standing at the parting of the ways is a serious matter, however interesting it may be at the moment." Honora's face flushed and her eyes filled. "Oh," she cried, "I can't bear to see you putting happiness behind you. What's the use? Don't you realize that men and women are little more than motes in the sunshine, here for an hour and to-morrow--nothing! I'm pretty well through with those theories that people call principles and convictions. Why not be obedient to Nature? She's the great teacher. Doesn't she tell you to take love and joy when they come your way?" "We've threshed all that out, haven't we?" asked Kate impatiently. "Why go over the ground again? But I must say, if a woman of your intelligence--and my friend at that--can't see why I'm taking an uphill road, alone, instead of walking in a pleasant valley with the best of companions, then I can hardly expect any one else to sympathize with me. However, what does it matter? I said I was going alone so why should I complain?" Her glance fell on the fireplace before which she and Karl had sat the night when he first welcomed her beneath his roof. She remembered the wild silence of the hour, the sense she had had of the invisible presence of the mountains, and how Karl's love had streamed about her like shafts of light. "I've seen nothing of Karl," said Honora abruptly. "He went up the trail yesterday morning, and hasn't been back to the house since." "He didn't come home last night? He didn't sleep in his bed?" "No, I tell you. He's had the Door of Life slammed in his face, and I suppose he's pretty badly humiliated. Karl isn't cut out to be a beggar hanging about the gates, is he? Pence and crumbs wouldn't interest him. I wonder if you have any idea how a man like that can suffer? Do you imagine he is another Ray McCrea?" "Pour my coffee, please, Honora," said Kate. Honora took the hint and said no more, while Kate hastily ate her breakfast. When she had finished she said as she left the table:-- "I'd be glad if you'll tell the stable-man that I'll not take the morning train. I'm sorry to change my mind, but it's unavoidable." The smart traveling-suit she had purchased in Los Angeles was her equipment that morning. To this she added her hat and traveling-veil. "If you're going up the mountain," said the maladroit Honora, "better not wear those things. They'll be ruined." "Oh, things!" cried Kate angrily. She stopped at the doorway. "That wasn't decent of you, Honora. I am going up the mountain--but what right had you to suppose it?" The whole household knew it a moment later--the maids, the men at the stables and the corral. They knew it, but they thought more of her. She went so proudly, so openly. The judgment they might have passed upon lesser folk, they set aside where Wander and his resistant sweetheart were concerned. They did not know the theater, these Western men and women, but they recognized drama when they saw it. Their deep love of romance was satisfied by these lovers, so strong, so compelling, who moved like demigods in their unconcern for the opinions of others. Kate climbed the trail which she and Wander had taken together on the day when she had mockingly proclaimed her declaration of independence. She smiled bitterly now to think of the futility of it. Independence? For whom did such a thing exist? Karl Wander was drawing her to him as that mountain of lode in the Yellowstone drew the lightnings of heaven. In time she came to the bench beside the torrent where she and Wander had rested that other, unforgettable day. She paused there now for a long time, for the path was steep and the altitude great. The day had turned gray and a cold wind was arising--crying wind, that wailed among the tumbled boulders and drove before it clouds of somber hue. After a time she went on, and as she mounted, encountering ever a steeper and more difficult way, she tore the leather of her shoes, rent the skirt of her traveling-frock, and ruined her gloves with soil and rock. "If I have to go back as I came, alone," she reflected, "all in tatters like this, to find that he is at the mines or the village, attending to his work, I shall cut a fine figure, shan't I? The very gods will laugh at me." She flamed scarlet at the thought, but she did not turn back. Presently she came to a place where the path forked. A very narrow, appallingly deep gorge split the mountain at this point, each path skirting a side of this crevasse. "I choose the right path," said Kate aloud. Her heart and lungs were again rebelling at the altitude and the exertion, and she was forced to lie flat for a long time. She lay with her face to the sky watching the roll of the murky clouds. Above her towered the crest of the mountain, below her stretched the abyss. It was a place where one might draw apart from all the world and contemplate the little thing that men call Life. Neither ecstasy nor despair came to her, though some such excesses might have been expected of one whose troubled mind contemplated such magnificence, such terrific beauty. Instead, she seemed to face the great soul of Truth--to arrive at a conclusion of perfect sanity, of fine reasonableness. Conventions, pettiness, foolish pride, waywardness, secret egotism, fell away from her. The customs of society, with what was valuable in them and what was inadequate, assumed their true proportions. It was as if her House of Life had been swept of fallacy by the besom of the mountain wind. A feeling of strength, courage, and clarity took possession of her. There was an expectation, too,--nay, the conviction,--that an event was at hand fraught for her with vast significance. The trail, almost perpendicular now, led up a mighty rock. She pulled herself up, and emerging upon the crown of the mountain, beheld the proud peaks of the Rockies, bare or snow-capped, dripping with purple and gray mists, sweeping majestically into the distance. Such solemnity, such dark and passionate beauty, she never yet had seen, though she was by this time no stranger to the Rockies, and she had looked upon the wonders of the Sierras. She envisaged as much of this sublimity as eye and brain might hold; then, at a noise, glanced at that tortuous trail--yet more difficult than the one she had taken--which skirted the other side of the continuing crevasse. On it stood Karl Wander, not as she had seen him last, impatient, racked with mental pain, and torn with pride and eager love. He was haggard, but he had arrived at peace. He was master over himself and no longer the creature of futile torments. To such a man a woman might well capitulate if capitulation was her intent. With such a chieftain might one well treat if one had a mind to maintain the suzerainty of one's soul. The wind assailed Kate violently, and she caught at a spur of rock and clung, while her traveling-veil, escaped from bounds, flung out like a "home-going" pennant of a ship. "A flag of truce, Kate?" thundered Wander's voice. "Will you receive it?" cried Kate. Now that she had sought and found him, she would not surrender without one glad glory of the hour. "Name your conditions, beloved enemy." "How can we talk like this?" "We're not talking. We're shouting." "Is there no way across?" "Only for eagles." "What did you mean by staying up here? I was terrified. What if you had been dying alone--" "I came up to think things out." "Have you?" "Yes." "Well?" "Kate, we must be married." "Yes," laughed Kate. "I know it." "But--" "Yes," called Kate, "that's it. But--" "But you shall do your work: I shall do mine." "I know," said Kate. "That's what I meant to say to you. There's more than one way of being happy and good." "Go your way, Kate. Go to your great undertaking. Go as my wife. I stay with my task. It may carry me farther and bring me more honor than we yet know. I shall go to you when I can: you must come to me--when you will. What more exhilarating? A few years will bring changes. I hear they may send me to Washington, after all. But they'll not need to send me. Lead where you will, I will follow--on condition!" "The condition?" She stood laughing at him, shining at him, free and proud as the "victory" of a sculptor's dream. "That you follow my leadership in turn. We'll have a Republic of Souls, Kate, with equal opportunity--none less, none greater--with high expediency for the watchword." "Yes. Oh, Karl, I came to say all this!" "Then some day we'll settle down beneath one roof--we'll have a hearthstone." "Yes," cried Kate again, this time with an accent that drowned forever the memory of her "no." "Turn about, Kate; turn about and go down the trail. You'll have to do it alone, I'm afraid. I can't get over there to help." "I don't need help," retorted Kate. "It's fine doing it alone." "Follow your path, and I will follow mine. We can keep in sight almost all the way, I think, and, as you know, a little below this height, the paths converge." Kate stood a moment longer, looking at him, measuring him. "How splendid to be a man," she called. "But I'm glad I'm a woman," she supplemented hastily. "Not half so glad as I, Kate, my mate,--not a thousandth part so glad as I." She held out her arms to him. He gave a great laugh and plunged down the path. Kate swept her glance once more over the dark beauty of the mountain-tops--her splendid world, wrought with illimitable joy in achievement by the Maker of Worlds,--and turning, ran down the great rock that led to the trail. 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