Kipling's pregnant line shot across her mind:

"For the colonel's lady and Judy 0'Grady are sisters under their skins."

"I wonder," she mused. "I wonder if we are? I wonder if that poor,little, brown-skinned fool isn't after all as much a victim as I am. Shedoesn't know much better, maybe; but Charlie does, and he doesn't seem tocare. It merely embarrasses him to be found out, that's all. It isn'tright. It isn't fair, or decent, or anything. We're just for him to--touse."

She looked out along the shores piled high with broken ice and snow,through a misty air to distant mountains that lifted themselvesimperiously aloof, black spires against the sky,--over a jungle alldraped in winter robes; shore, mountains, and jungle alike were chilland hushed and desolate. The lake spread its forty-odd miles in aboomerang curve from Roaring Springs to Fort Douglas, a cold, lifelessgray. She sat a long time looking at that, and a dead weight seemed tosettle upon her heart. For the second time that day she broke down. Notthe shamed, indignant weeping of an hour earlier, but with the essenceof all things forlorn and desolate inside her choked sobs.

She did not hear Jack Fyfe come in. She did not dream he was there,until she felt his arm gently on her shoulder and looked up. And sodeep was her despondency, so keen the unassuaged craving for some humansympathy, some measure of comprehending, that she made no effort toremove his arm. She was in too deep a spiritual quagmire to refuse anysort of aid, too deeply moved to indulge in analytical self-fathoming.She had a dim sense of being oddly comforted by his presence, as if she,afloat on uncharted seas, saw suddenly near at arm a safe anchorage andwelcoming arms. Afterward she recalled that. As it was, she looked upat Fyfe and hid her wet face inside her arms again. He stood silent a fewseconds. When he did speak there was a peculiar hesitation inside hisvoice.

"What is it?" he said softly. "What's the trouble now?"

Briefly she told him, the barriers of her habitual reserve swept asidebefore the essentially human need to share a burden that has grown toogreat to bear alone.

"0h, hell," Fyfe grunted, when she had finished. "This isn't any placefor you at all."