He jerked away from her, strode across the room. He yanked at the small crooked window. It stuck fast. He drove his fist savagely through one of the panes. There was a crash and the diminishing tinkle of broken glass. The fresh damp evening air swept by him. The jagged cut on his hand gave him a fierce pleasure. It hurt, and the hurt relieved him.

Theo lay with closed eyes where he had left her, motionless except for the sharp rise and fall of her breasts beneath the blue bodice.

'Theodosia,' he said roughly, 'there is one way: one thing we can do.'

Her eyes opened; her pale mouth formed a question.

'Come away with me: out beyond the mountains. No one asks questions there.'

'Out beyond the mountains?' she repeated slowly. 'How could we?'

He made an impatient gesture. 'We shouldn't be the first couple to run away from entanglements, take new names, and start afresh in the wilderness.'

'You mean to leave. my husband, my baby, and my father——' She frowned a little as though trying to understand. 'And you, Meme? Would you, after all, give up your expedition, forfeit the President's trust, and your honor——'

He laughed through tight lips. 'Obviously. One docs not run off with another man's wife and enjoy the blessings of the community. Yet it would be far harder for you——'

He stopped, overcome by the impossibility of this wild proposal into which his passion had betrayed him. Theodosia in a log cabin struggling to cook the game he brought her, toting water, tending the corn patch: she who expected service from underlings as unquestioningly as she expected air to breathe. Even more impossible to imagine her alone for days as she would have to be, without hope of help in case of illness or danger, dependent only upon herself.

Many gently bred women had found within them the strength to lead this hard frontier life, but much as he loved her, Lewis knew that Theodosia could never be one of these. Adversity would break her. And in this case, physical hardship was the least of it. How long could her love endure against the inevitable remorse? She might abandon her husband with no sufferings except those that sprang from outraged convention, but never her child—or her father.

I've been a fool, he thought, a mawkish fool. And he looked at her with suddenly hostile eyes.

She understood his look and smiled sadly. 'Yes, it's impossible, Merne. Soon we should hate each other. You would never forgive me if I went with you. I think you would never forgive anything that turned you from your purpose. We can't wrench the pattern of our lives as violently as that. Perhaps some day it will be different. We're both young. You'll come back from your expedition—I know you will——' Her voice wavered and broke.