to the girl for the first time a definite appreciation of this thing that she had done. And that moment from the scene, never to appear again, passed Bess Landor the child; and invisibly into her place, taking up the play where the other had left, came Elizabeth Landor the woman. Very, very long the girl sat there so; unconsciously long. With the swift reaction of youth, the scene of the excitement vanished, the personal menace gone, the impression it had made passed promptly into abeyance. As when she and the man had sat alone in the tiny room of the hotel, another consideration was too insistent, too vital, to prevent dominating the moment. Any other diversion, save absolute physical pain itself, would have been inadequate, was inadequate. Gradually, minute by minute, as the outline of the town itself had vanished, the depressing impression of that jeering frontier mob faded; and in its stead, looming bigger and bigger, advancing, enfolding like a storm cloud until it blotted out every other thought, came realisation of the thing she had done: came appreciation of its finality, its immensity. Then it was that the infinite bigness of this uninhabited wild, the sense of its infinite loneliness, pressed her close. Despite herself, against all reason, as a child is afraid of the dark there grew upon her a terror of this intangible thing called solitude that stretched out into the future endlessly. Smiling as it was this day, unchangeably smiling, she fancied a time when it would not smile, when its passive eventless monotony would be maddening. Swiftly, cumulatively as with every intense nature impressions reproduce, this one augmented. Again into the consideration intruded the absolute finality, the irrevocability of her choice. More distinctly than when she had listened to the original, memory recalled the vow of the marriage ceremony she had taken: "For better or for worse, in sickness or in health, until death do us part." No, there was no escape, no possible avenue that remained unguarded. The knowledge overwhelmed her, suffocated her. Vague possibilities, recently born, became realities. Closer and closer gripped the solitude. For the first time in her existence the dead surrounding silence became unbearable. Almost desperately she shifted back in her seat. Instinctively she sought the hand of her companion, pressed it tight. A mist came into her eyes, until the very team itself was blotted out. "Oh, How," she confessed tensely, "I'm afraid!" The man roused, as one recalled from reverie, as one awakened but not yet completely returned. "Afraid, Bess? Afraid of what?" "Of the silence, of the future; of you, a bit." "Afraid of me, Bess?" Perplexed, wondering, the man held the team to a walk and simultaneously the side curtains ceased flapping, hung close. "I don't think I understand. Tell me why, Bess." "I can't. A child doesn't know why it's afraid of the dark. The dark has never hurt it. It merely is."