"And you never loved me in that way, dear?"
"You are my wife!" Again the fierceness, "you must and shall come first."
"No, Lans; I am not your wife!"
And with this Cynthia stood up and clasped her hands close.
"Every law in the land says you are!" Treadwell flung his head back and faced her; "this is a hideous tangle, but above all—through all—you are my wife!"
"I do not know, I cannot make you feel how I see it—but I am not your wife! I—I do not want to be! Why, when I saw the light in—in Marian Spaulding's eyes a little time ago as she ran to you—I seemed to know all at once—that it was not to you, Lans dear, that I wanted to run in my trouble, but to——"
"Whom?"
"To Sandy, dear. Sandy, up there in Lost Hollow."
"Cynthia!"
Was she shamming? Was she striving, ignorantly, to make escape easy for them all? Was she utterly devoid of moral sense? "Moral sense!" At that Lans Treadwell paused. The glory shining from Cynthia's eyes as she stood before him, made him shrink and drop his own. The strength and purity of the high places was upon her. She was lovely and tender, but primitively firm. The law of the cities she did not know; but the law of the secret places of the hills was hers. The law of love and Love's God.