Of a surety she had drawn her weapon on the
wrong side in the mining trouble. Over-hasty?--yes. And shamefully
disloyal. Perhaps there was something in it, after all; that is to
say, it might be they had made a mistake. She saw plainly enough that
unless she could get back some of the old enthusiasm for that
wilderness life, unless the fascination of magnificent distances, of
silent, breathless forests, of contented, quiet days on trail and
stream, could lay fast hold of her again, they would only defer the day
of reckoning, as Bill had said.
And she was not prepared to go that far. She still harbored a
smoldering grudge against him for his volcanic outburst in Granville,
and too precipitate departure. He had given her no time to think, to
make a choice. The flesh-pots still seemed wholly desirable--or,
rather, she shrank from the alternative. When she visualized the North
it uprose always in its most threatening presentment, indescribably
lonely, the playground of ruthless, elemental forces, terrifying in its
vast emptinesses. It appalled her in retrospect, loomed unutterably
desolate in contrast to her present surroundings.
No, she would not attempt to call him back.
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