In these moments he forgot that civilization was waiting for him, that for eighteen months he had been struggling between life and death at the naked and barbarous end of the earth.

All at once, in the space of a few minutes, his world had shrunken until it held but two things for him--the autumn-tinted forests, and the girl.
Beyond these he thought of nothing except the minutes that were dragging like thirty weights of lead.
As the hand of his watch marked off the twenty-fifth of the prescribed thirty he turned his steps in the direction of the pool.

He half expected that she would be there when he came over the ridge of rock.
But she had not returned.

He looked up the coulee, end then at the firm white sand close to the water.

The imprints of her feet were there--small, narrow imprints of a heeled shoe.