She had made her choice, definitely and decisively, without hesitation and without fear.

And now, as she stared unseeingly at the window against which the rain was beating, the woman in her girlish body rose in her mightier than in the hour of her happiness, fighting to find a way--crying out for the man she loved.
Her mind swept back in a single flash through all the years she had lived, through her years of unhappiness and torment as the foster-girl of Jed Hawkins and his broken, beaten wife; through summers and winters that had seemed ages to her, eternities of desolation, of heartache, of loneliness, with the big wilderness her one friend on earth.

As the window rattled in a fresh blast of storm, she thought of the day months ago when she had accidentally stumbled upon the hiding-place of Roger McKay.

Since that day he had been her God, and she had lived in a paradise.

He had been father, mother, brother, and at last--what she most yearned for--a lover to her.