Thought of Ellen Jorth recurred.

Had he met her only that morning?
She was up there in the forest, asleep under the starlit pines.

Who was she?
What was her story?
That savage fling of her skirt, her bitter speech and passionate flaming face--they haunted Jean.

They were crystallizing into simpler memories, growing away from his bewilderment, and therefore at once sweeter and more doubtful.

"Maybe she meant differently from what I thought," Jean soliloquized.