“I—I must think!” she whispered, and closed her lovely eyes. What she saw in the black space behind the burning lids no one could know, but her tangled little life must have been part of it. She must have seen it all—the bright, sunlit dream fading first into shadow, then into the dun colour of the deserted hills. Burke Lawson must have stood boldly forth, in his supreme unselfishness and Godlike power, as her redeemer—her man! The gray eyes suddenly opened and they were calm and still.
“I—I only wanted him—to remember me—like he once did,” she faltered. She was taking her last look at Truedale. “So long as he—he didn’t think me—less; I reckon I don’t want him—to think of me as I am—now.”
“Suppose”—the desperate demand for full justice to Nella-Rose drove Lynda on—“suppose it were in your power and mine to sweep everything aside; suppose I—I went away. What would you do, Nella-Rose?”
Again the eyes closed. After a moment:
“I—would go back to—my man!”
“You mean that—as truly as God hears you?—you mean that, Nella-Rose?”
“Yes. But lil’ Ann?”
Now that she had made the great decision about Truedale, there was still “lil’ Ann.”
Lynda fought for mastery over the dread thing that was forcing its way into her consciousness. Then something Nella-Rose was saying caught her fevered thought.
“When I was a lil’ child I used to dream that some day I would do a mighty big thing—maybe this is it. I don’t want to hurt his life and—yours; I couldn’t hurt my man and—and—the babies waiting back there for me. But—lil’ Ann!”