Judith clasped her hands. “Let us go and look for him. Why do we waste time?” But Kitty hung back. She was shaken from her fall, and upset by the events of the morning. Besides, her faith in Peter’s ability to cope with all the exigencies of this country was supreme. And chiefest reason of all for her not going was a something within her that winced at the thought of this fellowship that had for its object the quest of Peter. “Oh, don’t you see,” pleaded Judith, “that if something had not happened to him he would have been here long ago?” Judith’s anxiety awoke in Kitty a new consciousness. What was she to him, that at the possibility of harm, a fear not shared by Kitty, she should throw off a reserve that every line of her face pronounced habitual? In her very energy of attitude, an energy that all unconsciously communicated itself to Kitty, there was the power that belongs to all elemental human emotion—the power that compels. Kitty rose to follow Judith, then hesitated. “I’m sure nothing has happened him. No, I’m really too unstrung by my fall to walk.” She sank again to the bowlder on which she had been sitting. To the woman of the world, Judith’s ingenuous display of feeling had in its very sincerity a something pitiable. How could she strip from her soul every fold of reserve and stand unloved and unashamed, sanctified, as it were, by the very hopelessness of her passion? How could women make of their whole existence a thing to be rejected, reflected Kitty, who, giving nothing, could not understand. She looked again at the bronzed face beside her, so bold in outline, so expressive in detail. Yes, she was beautiful, and yet, what had her beauty availed her? The thought that she herself was the preferred woman throbbed through her for a moment with a sense of exaltation. The next moment a haunting doubt laid hold of her heart, held up mockingly the little that she and Peter had lived through together, the lofty plane of friendship along which she had tried to lead his unwilling feet sedately, his protests, his frank amusement at her serious pretensions to a career. How much fuller might not have been the intercourse between him and this woman, who, in all probability, had been his comrade for years? And she had been idealizing him, and his love for her, and his loneliness! Kitty stood with eyes cast down, while images crowded upon her, leaving her cold and smiling. “But think,” pleaded Judith; “if you don’t come it will take me longer to search the trail-marks. You could show me just where the horses ran—” Kitty’s eyes were still on the ground. She did not lift them, and Judith, realizing that further appeal was but a waste of time, turned and ran swiftly down the trail. “He is her lover,” said Kitty; and all the wilderness before her was no lonelier than her heart.