She could deny it no longer. Nor was the shame with which she
confessed it unmingled with pride. He was a man to compel love,
one of the mood imperative, chain-armored in the outdoor virtues
of strength and endurance and stark courage. Her abasement began
only where his superlation ended. That a being so godlike in
equipment should have been fashioned without a soul, and that she
should have given her heart to him. This was the fount of her
degradation.
It was of these things she thought as she drove in the late
afternoon toward those Antelope Peaks he had first pointed out to
her. She swept past the scene of the battle and dipped down into
the plains for a run to that western horizon behind the jagged
mountain line of which the sun was radiantly setting in a splash
of glorious colors. Lost in thought, space slipped under her
wheels unnoticed. Not till her car refused the spur and slowed to
a despondent halt did she observe that velvet night was falling
over the land.
She prowled round the machine after the fashion of the motorist,
examining details that might be the cause of the trouble. She
discovered soon enough with instant dismay that the gasolene tank
was empty.
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