"Yes, I was ever true to you. From the first moment we met, and against my own beliefs. You didn't see. You expected me to protest it daily: to repeat the tale as a child repeats its lesson for a comfit. Blind, I say, blind! You'll charge that I never told you that I loved you. You wouldn't have believed me, even had I done so. Besides, I didn't realize that you doubted, until the time when you were learning--" he walked jerkily across the room and took up his hat,--"learning the thing you threw in my face." He started to leave, but stopped in the doorway, without looking back. "You tell me you've suffered. For the first time in my life I say to another human being: I hope so." He turned, unsteadily, down the steps. "Wait," pleaded the woman. "Wait!" The man did not stop, or turn. Camilla Maurice sank back in the chair, weak as one sick unto death, her mind a throbbing, whirling chaos,--as of a patient under an anaesthetic. Something she knew she ought to do, intended doing, and could not. She groped desperately, but overwhelming, insistent, there had developed in her a sudden, preventing tumult--in paradox, a confusion in rhythm--like the beating of a great hammer on an anvil, only incredibly more swift than blows from human hands. Over and over again she repeated to herself the one word: "wait," "wait," "wait," but mechanically now, without thought as to the reason. Then, all at once, soft, all-enfolding, kindly Nature wrapped her in darkness. She awoke with the big collie licking her hand, and a numbness of cramped limbs that was positive pain. A long-necked pullet was standing in the doorway, with her mouth open; others stood wondering, beyond. The sun had moved until it no longer shone in at the tiny south windows, and the shadow of the house had begun to lengthen. Camilla stood up in the doorway; uncertain, dazed. A great lump was on her forehead, which she stroked absently, without surprise at its presence. She looked about the yard, and, her breath coming more quickly, at the prairie. A broad green plain, parted by the road squarely in the centre, smiled at her in the sunlight. That was all. She stepped outside and shaded her eyes with her hand. Not a wagon nor a human being was in sight. Again the weakness and the blackness came stealing over her; she sank down on the doorstep. "O God, what have I done!" she wailed. The hens returned to their search for bugs; but the big collie stayed by her side, whimpering and fondling her hand. CHAPTER V--THE DOMINANCE OF THE EVOLVED