Page:Lost Ecstasy (1927).pdf/301

 a road which wound across the empty open country. It rose to a hill and was lost. So far as eye could judge it served no one, went nowhere. But she knew better. She knew that it led to the Reservation and to Tom McNair.

She sat down and waited, and the dog shivering with cold, crept into her lap! It smelled to heaven of flea-killer, but because it was cold she held it close. She had no feeling of shame at what she was doing. She was beyond shame. She neither hated nor loved. She waited.

And after an hour she had her answer. A small muddy car labored over the hill and began to descend. It followed a rut already made, advancing drunkenly and ribaldly, and as it came closer she saw Clare at the wheel. She was intent on driving. Not until she was almost abreast of her did she see Kay. She looked frightened, but the next minute she had stopped the car.

"Want a lift?" she said airily.

"Thanks. I'm out for a walk."

They stared at each other, Kay pale, Clare defiant. Then Clare started the car again, with a faint smile.

"These roads are sure hell," she said, and went on. Not until she was almost into the town did she remember that she had one of Kay's plaid blankets across her knees. She was frightened then; she stopped the car and rolling it up, dropped it into an irrigation ditch beside the road. And Kay, suspecting some such action, saw it lying there on her way back.

What was she to do? She had already done her best. She had worked for him, loved him, been lonely for him, forgiven him over and over. But there was a limit to what one could forgive or endure. She had tried. She was fairer than that, they had both tried. But he had never really wanted to marry her. He had had this girl then. Perhaps he had never let go of her, for all his protestations. How had she known that he was going to be at the ranch that week-end, unless he had told her, or written her? That was it, of course. He had written. He had got rid of her, sent her into town, so that he

Her world was profoundly shaken; what she wanted was