When she had rested and risen and gone a half mile back toward Yavapai, she repeated aloud: "As big as this...." A great contrast that had been! Bruce Bayard, big, strong, controlled, clean and thinking largely and clearly; Ned Lytton, little, weak, victim of his appetites, foul and selfish. She wondered rather vaguely about Bayard. Was he of that country? Was he the lover of some mountain girl? Was he, possibly, the husband? No, she recalled that he had said that he lived alone.... Well, so did she, for that matter! Scraps of Bayard's talk the night before came back to her and she pondered over them, twisting their meanings, wondering if she had been justified in the relief his assurances gave her. There, alone in the daylight, they all seemed very incredible that she should have opened her heart, given her dearest confidences to that man. As she thought back through the hour, she became a trifle panicky, for she did not realize then that to have remained silent, to have bottled her emotions within herself longer would have been disastrous; she had reached Yavapai and the breaking point at the same hour, and, had not Bayard opportunely encountered her, she would have been forced to talk to the wheezing hotel proprietor or Nora, the waitress, or the first human being she met on the street ... someone, anyone! Then, abruptly changing her course of thought, she reminded herself of the strangeness of the truth that not once had it occurred to her to worry over the fact that her husband, in an unconscious condition, had been taken away, she knew not where, by this stranger. The faith she had felt in Bayard from the first prevailed. She faced the future with forebodings; about the present condition of Ned Lytton she did not dare think. A comforting factor was the conviction that everything was being done for him that she could do and more ... for she always had been helpless. She breathed in nervous exasperation at the idea that everything she saw, talked about, thought or experienced came back to impress her further with the hopelessness of the situation, then told herself that fretting would not help; that she must do her all to make matters over, that she must make good her purpose in coming to this new place. As she neared the town again, she saw the figure of a man approaching. He walked slowly, with head down, and his face was wholly shaded by the broad brim of his felt hat. His hands were behind his back and the aimlessness of his carriage gave evidence of deep thought. When the woman was about to pass him, he turned back toward town without looking up and it was the scuffing of her shoe that attracted him. He faced about quickly at the sound and stared hard at Ann. The stare was not offensive. She saw first his eyes, black and large and wonderfully kind; his hair was white; his shaven lips gentle. Then she observed that he wore the clothing of a clergyman. His hand went to his hat band, after his first gaze at her, and he smiled.