Rhoda stood with unseeing eyes while before her inward vision passed a magnificent panorama of the glories through which Kut-le had led her. Chaos of mountain and desert, resplendent with color; cool, sweet depth of cañon; burning height of tortured peak; slope of pungent piñon forest--all wrapped in the haze which is the desert's own.
Rhoda knew the truth; knew that she loved Kut-le! She knew that she loved him with all the passionate devotion for which her rebirth had given her the capacity.
With this acknowledgment, all her calm was swept away. With fingers clasped against her breast, with wide eyes on the brooding night, she wished that she might tell him this that had come to her. If only once more the inscrutable tenderness of his black eyes were upon her! If the deep imperative voice were but sounding in her ears again! If only she could feel now the touch of his powerful arms as he carried her the long sick miles to Chira. Trembling with longing, her gaze fell upon the man sleeping at her feet. She drew a sudden troubled breath. Must she renounce this new rapture of living? Must she?
"Have I found new life in the desert only to lose it?" she whispered. "O Kut-le! Kut-le!"
DeWitt slept on, unmoving, and Rhoda watched him with tragedy-stricken eyes.
"What shall I do!" she whispered, lips quivering, shaking hands twisting together. "Oh, what shall I do!"
She tried to picture a future with Kut-le. She saw his tenderness, his purposefulness, the bigness of his mind and spirit. Then with a cold clutch at her throat came the thought of race barrier, and in a moment Rhoda was plunged into the oldest, the most hopeless, the least solvable of all love's problems. Minute after minute went by and the girl, standing by the sleeping man, fought a fight that shook her slender body and racked her soul. At last she raised her face to the sky.
"I want to do what is right!" she said piteously. "It doesn't matter about me, if only I can decide what is right!" Then after, a pause, "I will marry John! I will!" like a child that has been punished and promises to be good. Still another pause, then, "So that part of me is dead!" and she put her fingers before her eyes and fell to crying, not with the easy tears of a woman but with the deep, agonizing sobs of a man over his dead.
"Kut-le, I wanted you! I wanted you for my mate! If I could have heard you, seen you, felt you once more! Nothing else would have mattered. I wanted you!"