"I think--I hear your telephone,--Selma!" Paula managed to say, her voice dry, as if the words were cut from paper. "Yes, yes, I must go, but here's another story. A rotten cad--but how he can write! I don't mean books--but letters!... He's the one I told you about--the Westerner--while the old man was in the South!" The last was called from the hall. The heavy door slammed between them. Paula could not stand--could not keep her mouth from dropping open. Her temples seemed to be cracking apart.... She saw herself in half-darkness--like _The Thing_ last night--beating her breast in the gloom. She felt as if she must laugh--in that same wind-blown, chattering way. ELEVENTH CHAPTER PAULA IS SWEPT DEEP INTO A DESOLATE COUNTRY BY THE HIGH TIDE, BUT NOTES A QUICK CHANGE IN SELMA CROSS Paula wrote a short letter to Quentin Charter in the afternoon, and did not begin to regret it until too late. It was not that she had said anything unwise or discordant--but that she had written at all.... Her heart felt dead. She had trusted her all to one--and her all was lost. A little white animal that had always been warm and petted, suddenly turned naked to face the reality of winter,--this was the first sense, and the paramount trouble was that she could not die quickly enough. The full realization was slow to come. Indeed, it was not until the night and the next day that she learned the awful reaches of suffering of which a desolated human mind is capable. It was like one of those historic tides which rise easily to the highest landmarks of the shore-dweller, and not till then begin to show their real fury, devastating vast fields heretofore virgin to the sea. Along many coasts and in many lives there is one, called The High Tide.... Paula felt that she could have coped with her sorrow, had this been a personal blow, but her faith in the race of men, the inspiration of her work, her dream of service--all were uprooted. She did not pretend to deny that she had loved Quentin Charter--her first and loftiest dream of a mate, the heart's cry of all her womanhood. True, as man and woman, they had made no covenant, but to her (and had he not expressed the same in a score of ways?), there had been enacted a more wonderful adjustment, than any words could bring about. This was the havoc. She had lost more than a mere human lover. She dared now to say it, because, in losing, she perceived how great it had become--the passion was gone from her soul. Her place in the world was desolate; all her labors pointless. As a woman, she had needed his arms, less than an anchorage of faith in his nobility. And how her faith had rushed forth to that upper window across the States!