When alone again Columbine reverted to a mood vastly removed from her apparent levity with the rancher and his son.  A grave and inward-searching thought possessed her, and it had to do with the uplift, the spiritual advance, the rise above mere personal welfare, that had strangely come to her through Bent Wade.  From their first meeting he had possessed a singular attraction for her that now, in the light of the meaning of his life, seemed to Columbine to be the man’s nobility and wisdom, arising out of his travail, out of the terrible years that had left their record upon his face.

And so Columbine strove to bind forever in her soul the spirit which had arisen in her, interpreting from Wade’s rude words of philosophy that which she needed for her own light and strength.

She appreciated her duty toward the man who had been a father to her.  Whatever he asked that would she do.  And as for the son she must live with the rest of her life, her duty there was to be a good wife, to bear with his faults, to strive always to help him by kindness, patience, loyalty, and such affection as was possible to her.  Hate had to be reckoned with, and hate, she knew, had no place in a good woman’s heart.  It must be expelled, if that were humanly possible.  All this was hard, would grow harder, but she accepted it, and knew her mind.

Her soul was her own, unchangeable through any adversity.  She could be with that alone always, aloof from the petty cares and troubles common to people.  Wade’s words had thrilled her with their secret, with their limitless hope of an unknown world of thought and feeling.  Happiness, in the ordinary sense, might never be hers.  Alas for her dreams!  But there had been given her a glimpse of something higher than pleasure and contentment.  Dreams were but dreams.  But she could still dream of what had been, of what might have been, of the beauty and mystery of life, of something in nature that called sweetly and irresistibly to her.  Who could rob her of the rolling, gray, velvety hills, and the purple peaks and the black ranges, among which she had been found a waif, a little lost creature, born like a columbine under the spruces?

Love, sudden-dawning, inexplicable love, was her secret, still tremulously new, and perilous in its sweetness.  That only did she fear to realize and to face, because it was an unknown factor, a threatening flame.  Her sudden knowledge of it seemed inextricably merged with the mounting, strong, and steadfast stream of her spirit.

“I’ll go to him.  I’ll tell him,” she murmured.  “He shall have that!...  Then I must bid him—­good-by—­forever!”

To tell Wilson would be sweet; to leave him would be bitter.  Vague possibilities haunted her.  What might come of the telling?  How dark loomed the bitterness!  She could not know what hid in either of these acts until they were fulfilled.  And the hours became long, and sleep far off, and the quietness of the house a torment, and the melancholy wail of coyotes a reminder of happy girlhood, never to return.