For the first time something like a smile flitted over Gora's drawn face. "Perhaps. I hope you are right. I don't think I could ever really lose faith in that star." She was thinking: Oh, yes! I'll go back to California as quickly as I can get there—as a wounded animal crawls back to its lair.
She would have encircled the globe three times to get to it. Her state. To her it was what family and friends and home and children were to another. It was literally the only friend she had in the world. She would have flown to it if she could, sure of its beneficence.
"I shall go as soon as I can get passage," she said. "And you?"
"I must go too unless I can get a divorce here. I shall know that in a few days."
"Well, we travel on different steamers if you do go! I shall stop off at Truckee and go to Lake Tahoe. It will be a long while before I go to any place that reminds me of you. I no longer want to kill you but I want to forget you. Good-by."
CHAPTER XV
When she reached the foot of the hill she turned and looked back. Alexina was standing in one of the jagged window casements of the church. The bright warm sun was overhead in a cloudless sky. Its liquid careless rays flooded the ruin. Alexina's tall white figure, the soft blue of her hat forming a halo about her face, was bathed in its light; a radiant vision in that shattered town whose very stones cried out against the injustice of life.
Alexina, who was feeling like anything but a madonna in a stained glass window, waved a questing hand.
"The fortunate of earth!" thought Gora.
She set her lips grimly and walked across the valley with a steady stride. At least she could be one of the strong.