Page:Caroline Lockhart--The Fighting Shepherdess.djvu/326

 with a longing for him which was a kind of sweet torture that unnerved her and made the goal for which she strove of infinitesimal importance.

But that was one of the tricks of moonlight, she told herself angrily, to dwarf the things which counted, and with its false glamour give a fictitious value to those which in reality were but impediments. To-night the argu- ments were hollow as echoes. It was like telling herself, she thought, that she was going to sleep when she knew she was not. She yearned for Disston with all the in- tensity of her strong nature, and her efforts to conquer the longing seemed only to increase it.

" God! " She sat up suddenly and struck her breast as though the blow might somehow stop the pain there, and asked herself fiercely: " Must I live forever with this heartache? Isn't there some peace? Some way of dulling it until my heart stops beating? " She stretched out her arms and her voice broke with the sob that choked her as she cried miserably :

" Oh, Hughie 1 Hughie I I love you, and I can't help it!"

She felt herself stifling in the wagon and flung aside the covering. Thrusting her bare feet into moccasins and slipping on a sweater, she stepped into the white world that had the still emptiness of space.

The sheep dog got up from under the wagon and stood in front of her with a look of inquiry, but she gave no heed to him; instead, after a moment's indecision, she walked swiftly to the hillside where a shaft of marble shone in the moonlight. The sheep dog was at her heels, and when she crawled beneath the wire that fenced the spot where Mormon Joe had turned to dust, it followed.

Mormon Joe was only a name, a memory, but he had ioved her unselfishly and truly. Kate clasped her arms