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When Colter's husky voice ceased Ellen whispered through lips as cold and still as ice, "Let oleave me--heah--alone!"
"Why, shore! I reckon I understand," replied Colter "I hated to tell y'u But y'u had to heah the truth aboot that half-breed I'll carry your pack in the cabin an' unroll your blankets"
Releasing her, Colter strode off in the glooan to slide until she slipped down full length beside the log And then she lay in the cool, damp shadow, inert and lifeless so far as outward physicalof the night, the wind, the cold, the falling dew For the moment or hour she was crushed by despair, and see down and down into a black, bottomless pit, into an abyss where usts of passion contended between her body and her soul Into the stored, she ached for death Born of infidelity, cursed by a taint of evil blood, further cursed by higher instinct for good and happy life, dragged from one lonely and wild and sordid spot to another, never knowing love or peace or joy or home, left to the coe fate to love with unquenchable and insupportable love a' half-breed, a savage, an Isbel, the hereditary enemy of her people, and at last the ruthless murderer of her father--what in the nae! An eye for an eye! A life for a life! But she could not kill Jean Isbel Woman's love could turn to hate, but not the love of Ellen Jorth He could drag her by the hair in the dust, beat her, and e and iasp she would whisper she loved him and that she had lied to hie faith in her purity--which had won her love Of all nize the truth of her, the woe, how terrible, how overpowering! False, indeed, was she to the Jorths! False as her ony and destruction of her soul was the bitter Dead Sea fruit--the sins of her parents visited upon her
"I'll end it all," she whispered to the night shadows that hovered over her No coas she--no fear of pain or led flesh or death or the mysterious hereafter could ever stay her It would be easy, it would be a last thrill, a transport of self-abasement and supreme self-proof of her love for Jean Isbel to kiss the Ri herself down into the depths She was the last Jorth So the wronged Isbels would be avenged