She gave a little sob of excitement, laughed unsteadily, and sat down on a fallen log, burying her face in her hands.

They knew enough to let her alone and pretend not to notice her.  Geraldine chattered away cheerfully to the two men while the keepers drew the game.  Delancy tried to listen to her, but his anxious eyes kept turning toward Rosalie, and at length, unable to endure it, he went over and sat down beside her, careless of what others might infer.

“How funny,” whispered Geraldine to Duane.  “I had no idea that Delancy was so fond of her.  Had you?”

He started slightly.  “I?  Oh, no,” he said hastily—­too hastily.  He was a very poor actor.

Gravely, head bent, she walked forward beside him after Grandcourt had announced that he and Rosalie had had enough and that they wished Kemp to take them and their game to the sleigh.

Once, looking back, she saw the procession moving in the opposite direction through the woods, Kemp leading, rope over his shoulder, dragging the dead boar across the snow; Grandcourt, both rifles slung across his back, big arm supporting Rosalie, who walked as though very tired, her bright head drooping, her arm resting on his shoulder.

Geraldine looked up at Duane thoughtfully, and he supposed that she was about to speak, but her gaze became remote; she shifted her rifle, and walked on.

Before they came to the wild, shaggy country below Cloudy Mountain she said: 

“I’ve been thinking it over, Duane.  I can see in it nothing that can concern anybody except themselves.  Can you?”

“Not a thing, dear....  I’m sorry I suggested his coming.  I knew about this, but I clean forgot it when I asked you to invite him.”

“I remember, now, your consternation when you realised it,” she said, smiling.  “After all, Duane, if it is bound to happen, I don’t mind it happening here....  Poor, lonely little Rosalie!...  I’m depraved enough to be glad for her—­if it is really to be so.”

“I’m glad, too....  Only she ought to begin her action, I think.  It’s more prudent and better taste.”

“You said once that you had a contempt for divorce.”

“I never entertain the same opinion of anything two days in succession,” he said, smiling.  “When there is any one moral law that can justly cover every case which it is framed to govern, I’ll be glad to remain more constant in my beliefs.”

“Then you do believe in divorce?”

“To-day I happen to.”

“Duane, is that your attitude toward everything?”

“Everything except you,” he said cheerfully.  “That is literally true.  Even in my painting and in my liking for the work of others, I veer about like a weather-vane, never holding very long to one point of view.”

“You’re very frank about it.”

“Why not?”

“Isn’t it a—­a weakness?”

“I don’t think so,” he said so simply that she tucked her arm under his with a soft, confidential laugh.