It's so strange.

All at once I feel old.

And I can't understand these--these feelings that shake me." So Columbine brooded over the trouble that had come to her, never regretting her promise to the old rancher, but growing keener in the realization of a complexity in her nature that sooner or later would separate the life of her duty from the life of her desire.

She seemed all alone, and when this feeling possessed her a strange reminder of the hunter Wade flashed up.

She stifled another impulse to confide in him.
Wade had the softness of a woman, and his face was a record of the trials and travails through which he had come unhardened, unembittered.
Yet how could she tell her troubles to him?
A stranger, a rough man of the wilds, whose name had preceded him, notorious and deadly, with that vital tang of the West in its meaning! Nevertheless, Wade drew her, and she thought of him until the recurring memory of Jack Belllounds's rude clasp again crept over her with an augmenting disgust and fear.