showin' all this to you. That'll be the crownin' glory. An' if it's that much to me, then you be sure there's nothin' on earth I won't do for you." Columbine lifted her tear-stained face with a light of inspiration. "Oh, Wilson was right!" she murmured. "You are Heaven-sent! And I'm going to love you!" CHAPTER IX A new spirit, or a liberation of her own, had fired Columbine, and was now burning within her, unquenchable and unutterable. Some divine spark had penetrated into that mysterious depth of her, to inflame and to illumine, so that when she arose from this hour of calamity she felt that to the tenderness and sorrow and fidelity in her soul had been added the lightning flash of passion. "Oh, Ben--shall I be able to hold onto this?" she cried, flinging wide her arms, as if to embrace the winds of heaven. "This what, lass?" he asked. "This--this _woman!_" she answered, passionately, with her hands sweeping back to press her breast. "No woman who wakes ever goes back to a girl again," he said, sadly. "I wanted to die--and now I want to live--to fight.... Ben, you've uplifted me. I was little, weak, miserable.... But in my dreams, or in some state I can't remember or understand, I've waited for your very words. I was ready. It's as if I knew you in some other world, before I was born on this earth; and when you spoke to me here, so wonderfully--as my mother might have spoken--my heart leaped up in recognition of you and your call to my womanhood!... Oh, how strange and beautiful!" "Miss Collie," he replied, slowly, as he bent to his saddle-straps, "you're young, an' you've no understandin' of what's strange an' terrible in life. An' beautiful, too, as you say.... Who knows? Maybe in some former state I was somethin' to you. I believe in that. Reckon I can't say how or what. Maybe we were flowers or birds. I've a weakness for that idea." "Birds! I like the thought, too," replied Columbine. "I love most birds. But there are hawks, crows, buzzards!" "I reckon. Lass, there's got to be balance in nature. If it weren't for the ugly an' the evil, we wouldn't know the beautiful an' good.... An' now let's ride home. It's gettin' late." "Ben, ought I not go back to Wilson right now?" she asked, slowly. "What for?" "To tell him--something--and why I can't come to-morrow, or ever afterward," she replied, low and tremulously. Wade pondered over her words. It seemed to Columbine that her sharpened faculties sensed something of hostility, of opposition in him. "Reckon to-morrow would be better," he said, presently. "Wilson's had enough excitement for one day." "Then I'll go to-morrow," she returned. In the gathering, cold twilight they rode down the trail in silence. "Good night, lass," said Wade, as he reached his cabin. "An' remember you're not alone any more." "Good night, my friend," she replied, and rode on.