They were near the cañon now, and a heavy murmur, growing in intensity, pulsed in the quiet air. A great, hopeful light glowed in Helen's eyes; then it suddenly gave place to anxious fear. Was it too late after all? Had the dam given way? A moment and her questions would be answered. She sat with parted lips, and straining eyes, waiting for the rending, crashing thunder that would come if--then a sigh of relief escaped her. At the cañon's mouth, the turbid, soil-stained waters of the Sangre de Cristo were leaping and falling, but the volume was decreasing. She turned to Uncle Sid. "Wait here. I am going up the cañon." She felt that she was losing control of herself; she was striving against it, but in vain. Try as she would, she could lay hold of nothing in the past that could aid her. What had been her past? A sense of right and a determination to live in accord with it, and with what results? In self-confident pride she had looked down with contempt upon Ysleta boomers and their methods. At the first beck of Elijah, yielding to the subtle, intangible influence which he had thrown around her, she had abandoned her principles and had become as one of them. Not openly, not strongly, not defiantly, here was the shame and the pain of it; she had not been herself, but another. She had protested, to herself, to Elijah, she had stood up against him and had gone down before him. Day after day, the meshes of this sinister influence had held her more closely in its silken web; day after day, her past stood out more clearly with all its pitiful failures, and day after day the future, even with the light of the past beating white upon it, saw her yet more strongly bound. What deeper depths would have yawned to engulf her, had not Elijah's declaration jarred her to a loathsome recognition of what she was, of what she might become, she shuddered to forecast. A smile of bitter self-contempt played over her lips for a moment; then was gone. In her darkness, there was yet a ray of light. She had failed, failed miserably. She bore this in upon her soul with no softening words. This was her darkness. Brave, strong, patient hands had laid hold upon Elijah. If they had not saved him, they had saved his work. They had laid hold upon her. If they had not saved her, they had made her failures harmless. This was her light. She could forget herself, her pain, her shame, in the glory of Ralph's triumph. From the dust of her humiliation, she could yet raise a heart filled with unselfish love.