"The main thing," said Geraldine, "is to keep up my interest in the world. I want to do things. To sit idle is pure destruction to me. I write to Duane every morning, I read, I do a dozen things that require my attention--little duties that everybody has. But I can't continue to write to Duane all day. I can't read all day; duties are soon ended. And, Kathleen, it's the idle intervals I dread so--the brooding, the memories, the waiting for events scheduled in domestic routine--like dinner--the--the terrible waiting for sleep! That is the worst. I tell you, physical fatigue must help to save me--must help my love for Duane, my love for you and Scott, my self-respect--what is left of it. This rifle"--she held it out--"would turn into a nuisance if I let it. But I won't; I can't; I've got to use everything to help me." "You ride every day, don't you?" ventured the other woman timidly. "Before breakfast. That helps. I wish I had a vicious horse to break. I wish there was rough water where canoes ought not to go!" she exclaimed fiercely. "I need something of that sort." "You drove Scott's Blue Racer yesterday so fast that Felix came to me about it," said Kathleen gently. Geraldine laughed. "It couldn't go fast enough, dear; that was the only trouble." Then, serious and wistful: "If I could only have Duane.... Don't be alarmed; I can't--yet. But if I only could have him now! You see, his life is already very full; his work is absorbing him. It would absorb me. I don't know anything about it technically, but it interests me. If I could only have him now; think about him every second of the day--to keep me from myself----" She checked herself; suddenly her eyes filled, her lip quivered: "I want him now!" she said desperately. "He could save me; I know it! I want him now--his love, his arms to keep me safe at night! I want him to love me--_love_ me! Oh, Kathleen! if I could only have him!" A delicate colour tinted Kathleen's face; her ears shrank from the girl's low-voiced cry, with its glimmer of a passion scarcely understood. Long, long, the memory of his embrace had tormented her--the feeling of happy safety she had in his arms--the contact that thrilled almost past endurance, yet filled her with a glorious and splendid strength--that set wild pulses beating, wild blood leaping in her veins--that aroused her very soul to meet his lips and heed his words and be what his behest would have her. And the memory of it now possessed her so that she stood straight and slim and tall, trembling in the forest path, and her dark eyes looked into Kathleen's with a strange, fiery glimmer of pride: "I need him, but I love him too well to take him. Can I do more for him than that?" "Oh, my darling, my darling," said Kathleen brokenly, "if you believe that he can save you--if you really feel that he can----"