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prompting her to cover her agitation with the appearance of housewifely
activity; so every time that she beat against the bars of her situation she
carried a fork or a spoon or the lid of something. She set his place, fed the
fire, put on more coffee. He continued to work about the corral. Though the
sight of him was not quieting, she glanced up often enough to keep track of him.
He seemed to take his time.
    Janet, partially blinded by too much attention to the fire, looked up through
the dusk as he went to the edge of the little gully and descended. He was a
"full fathom of a man," and as he sank from sight his length seemed to go right
down through the surface of things, like Hamlet's father retiring to the lower
regions. When, finally, his head had disappeared, she dropped her pretense of
being cheerfully occupied and turned her attention in another direction. She
looked hard at the shackits door half open and the two bunks showing. Her brows
drew closer together, with the enigma between them. That little Home, to which
she had hurried with such a feeling of relief, had taken on a different guise.
It was now the place she must get away from. At the same time black night was
coming on as if to drive her into it. The sun was sinking. In the east the
vanguard of darkness was already advancing. She gripped her chin tensely and
tried to think, her forefinger pressed deep into the dimple. On the upper bunk
was a faded blue blanket; the lower one was red.
    Which way should she turn, or how conduct herself? Dreading to go and afraid
to stay, she was confronted with a problem the terms of which seemed only able
to repeat themselves. With the terrors of the night before her, she dared not
venture away from this man; her very nature courted his presence. His strength
and fearlessness she found herself clinging to as if he belonged to herand yet
he was a menace! Of course there might be nothing to fear if But If was the
dove that found no rest for the sole of its foot.
    The problem presented difficulty on every hand, as if things were on his
side. The darkness and the shack worked together to prevent escape; they seemed
to have her completely surrounded.
    What sort of man was he?
    Repeatedly she had taken note of his features, but only to feel more deeply
how little can be told in that way. Her inability to decide what impression he should have made on her was tantalizingthe aching question still
remained. The face is but a likeness; you should know the original. And yet his
countenance, so strongly painted on her mind, seemed always on the point of
answering her profoundest query. It was as if she knew him. She now contemplated
her mental image more deeply, feeling that she could get behind that countenance
and have absolute knowledge. But it was a delusion. The soul is invisible.
    In utter homelessness she gazed down at that little space of ground allotted
to him and her. And the supper which united them. In nature there seemed to be
no barrier between man and woman; their paths led toward each other. The flat
ground seemed paved with gradual ingratiating approach; and no defense but
outcrytoo terrible and too late. Surely too late, for he was in the position of
her protector, and she would have to assume that he was a gentleman; and how is
a girl by that prairie camp-fire going to say just how much room her person
shall occupy? Then how shall she set safe bounds? With the darkness closing in
around her she felt trapped.
    Her wits hard-pressed by this paradoxical plight, she looked with new longing
at the shack. She felt that if she were on the other side of that threshold, and
it were hers by right, she could stand behind it with some assurance of power
against him, some dependence in forces not her own. For a door-sill is definite,
and on it rises a formal spectre; but the way to a woman's heart is not so. Out
here there were no set bounds; nothing to give pause at a distance showing