Somewhere in the wild country was another girl—a girl who was beautiful and who loved this man—her man.
In the small hours of the morning as they talked he had not mentioned this girl, and Ethel forbore to question him, hoping that he would tell her of his own accord. But whether or not he purposely avoided the subject she did not know.
She believed in him—believed in his great love for her, in his absolute honesty and the new-found strength in him. Yet, hovering like a specter, intangible, elusive, menacing—the one disturbing element in her otherwise perfect happiness—was the other girl.
Who was she? What was she? What had she been to him? What had been their relations? And why had she accompanied him on his journey out of the woods? The phantom girl took on a sinister form as the question tantalized her brain.
This wild woman had helped to draw him from the river, had nursed him through a long sickness. He was under obligations to her, and—was that the only obligation?
The girl flushed hotly, and with an impatient movement flung the blankets from her, and proceeded to dress.
"I will never, never ask him," she decided, as she sat upon the thick bearskin in front of the stove and drew on her stockings. "He loves me and I love him.
"If he tells me it will be of his own free will; he shall not know that I ever heard of this girl. What is past, is past. There are sealed chapters in the lives of most men—why should I care?
"He is mine—mine!" she cried aloud, "and I love him!"
But deep down in her heart she knew that she did care—and that she would always care. And the knowledge hurt.