Only a brisk half-gale remained in the wake of the huger disturbance.  The sky and atmosphere cleared together.  The sun shone forth as before—­but low to the mountain horizon.  When even the clean wind too had gone, trailing behind its lawless brother, the desert calm became as absolute as Beth had beheld it in the morning.

She crept from her shelter and looked about the plain.  Her eyes were red and smarting.  She was dusted through and through.  In all the broad, gray expanse there was not a sign of anything alive.  Her mare had vanished.  Beth was lost in the desert, and night was fast descending.

Deliverance from the storm, or perhaps the storm’s very rage, had brought her a species of calm.  The fear she had was a dull, persistent dread—­an all-pervading horror of her situation, too large to be acute.  Nevertheless, she determined to seek for the road with all possible haste and make her way on foot, as far as possible, towards the Starlight highway and its possible traffic.

She was stiff from her ride and her cramped position on the earth.  She started off somewhat helplessly, where she felt the road must be.

She found no road.  Her direction may have been wrong.  Possibly the storm of wind had swept away the wagon tracks, for they had all been faint.  It had been but half a road at best for several miles.  Her heart sank utterly.  She became confused as to which way she had traveled.  Towards a pass in the hills whence she felt she must have come she hastened with a new accession of alarm.

She was presently convinced that she had chosen entirely wrong.  A realizing sense that she was hopelessly mixed assailed her crushingly.  To turn in any direction might be a grave mistake.  But to stand here and wait—­do nothing—­with the sun going down—­this was preposterous—­suicidal!  She must go on—­somewhere!  She must find the road!  She must keep on moving—­till the end!  Till the end!  How terrible that thought appeared, in such a situation!

She almost ran, straight onward towards the hills.  Out of breath very soon, she walked with all possible haste and eagerness, all the time looking for the road she had left, which the storm might have wiped from the desert.  She was certain now that the mountains towards which she was fleeing were away from the Goldite direction.

Once more she changed her course.  She realized then that such efforts as these must soon defeat themselves.  At least she must stick to one direction—­go on in a line as straight as possible, till she came to something!  Yet if she chose her direction wrong and went miles away from anything——­

She had to go on.  She had to take the chance.  She plodded southwestward doggedly, for perhaps a mile, then halted at something like a distant sound, and peered towards the shadows of the sunset.