To the woman of the world, Judith’s ingenuous display of feeling had in its very sincerity a something pitiable.  How could she strip from her soul every fold of reserve and stand unloved and unashamed, sanctified, as it were, by the very hopelessness of her passion?  How could women make of their whole existence a thing to be rejected, reflected Kitty, who, giving nothing, could not understand.  She looked again at the bronzed face beside her, so bold in outline, so expressive in detail.  Yes, she was beautiful, and yet, what had her beauty availed her?  The thought that she herself was the preferred woman throbbed through her for a moment with a sense of exaltation.  The next moment a haunting doubt laid hold of her heart, held up mockingly the little that she and Peter had lived through together, the lofty plane of friendship along which she had tried to lead his unwilling feet sedately, his protests, his frank amusement at her serious pretensions to a career.  How much fuller might not have been the intercourse between him and this woman, who, in all probability, had been his comrade for years?  And she had been idealizing him, and his love for her, and his loneliness!  Kitty stood with eyes cast down, while images crowded upon her, leaving her cold and smiling.

“But think,” pleaded Judith; “if you don’t come it will take me longer to search the trail-marks.  You could show me just where the horses ran—­”

Kitty’s eyes were still on the ground.  She did not lift them, and Judith, realizing that further appeal was but a waste of time, turned and ran swiftly down the trail.

“He is her lover,” said Kitty; and all the wilderness before her was no lonelier than her heart.

Swift, intent, Judith traced Kitty’s footprints.  They followed the game trail, the one she herself had taken earlier in the day.  She traced them back through the pine wood about a hundred rods, and then the trail-marks grew confused.  This was unquestionably the place where the horses had taken fright, circled, reared, then dashed in different directions.  She traced the other horse, whose tracks led under low-hanging boughs.  It would have been a difficult matter for a horse with a rider to clear; and now the impression of the horse’s shoes grew fainter, from the lighter footfalls of a horse at full gallop.

“Ah!” A cry broke from her as she saw the marks had become almost eliminated by something that had dragged, something heavy.  Those long-drawn lines were finger-prints, where a hand had dragged in its vain endeavor to grasp at something.  A sickening image came persistently before her eyes—­Peter’s upturned face, blood-smeared and disfigured.