Page 147 (1/1)
It was sunset when he faced the west, looking up at the pink snow-doe of spruce, and in that irl!" he spoke aloud, to the distant white peaks, to the winds, to the loneliness and silence of his prison, to the great pines and to the ic confession of weakness, of a truth, of hopeless position, of pitiful excuse for the transforle ended there when he faced his soul To understand himself was to be released fro doubt and wonder and fear But the fever of unrest, of uncertainty, had been nothing co torment of love
With somber deliberation he set about the tasks needful, and others that he ht make--his camp-fires andof saddles and pack-harness, the curing of buckskin for -suits So his days were not idle But all this as habit for him and needed no application of mind
And Dale, like sorade toward the savage, was a thinker Love made him a sufferer
The surprise and shame of his unconscious surrender, the certain hopelessness of it, the long years of communion with all that ild, lonely, and beautiful, the wonderfully developed insight into nature's secrets, and the sudden-dawning revelation that he was no o exempt from the ruthless ordinary destiny of th of his manhood and of his passion, and that the life he had chosen was of all lives the one calculated to make love sad and terrible
Helen Rayner haunted hiht there was not a place around caorous body, her dark, thoughtful eyes, her eloquent, resolute lips, and the sht she was there like a slender specter, pacing beside hi pines Every ca white radiance of her spirit
Nature had taught Dale to love solitude and silence, but love itself taught hile on his crag, for the blasted narled on its peak, for the elk and the wolf But it had not been intended for man And to live always in the silence of wild places was to become obsessed with self--to think and dreaood for his for the unattainable