Chapter: Ivar was sitting at a cobbler's bench in the barn, mending harness
by the light of a lantern and repeating to himself the 101st Psalm.
It was only five o'clock of a mid-October day, but a storm had
come up in the afternoon, bringing black clouds, a cold wind and
torrents of rain. The old man wore his buffalo-skin coat, and
occasionally stopped to warm his fingers at the lantern. Suddenly
a woman burst into the shed, as if she had been blown in, accompanied by
a shower of rain-drops. It was Signa, wrapped in a man's overcoat
and wearing a pair of boots over her shoes. In time of trouble
Signa had come back to stay with her mistress, for she was the only
one of the maids from whom Alexandra would accept much personal
service. It was three months now since the news of the terrible
thing that had happened in Frank Shabata's orchard had first run
like a fire over the Divide. Signa and Nelse were staying on with
Alexandra until winter.

"Ivar," Signa exclaimed as she wiped the rain from her face, "do
you know where she is?"

The old man put down his cobbler's knife. "Who, the mistress?"

"Yes. She went away about three o'clock. I happened to look out
of the window and saw her going across the fields in her thin dress
and sun-hat. And now this storm has come on. I thought she was
going to Mrs. Hiller's, and I telephoned as soon as the thunder
stopped, but she had not been there. I'm afraid she is out somewhere
and will get her death of cold."

Ivar put on his cap and took up the lantern. "JA, JA, we will see.
I will hitch the boy's mare to the cart and go."

Signa followed him across the wagon-shed to the horses' stable.
She was shivering with cold and excitement. "Where do you suppose
she can be, Ivar?"

The old man lifted a set of single harness carefully from its peg.
"How should I know?"

"But you think she is at the graveyard, don't you?" Signa persisted.
"So do I. Oh, I wish she would be more like herself! I can't
believe it's Alexandra Bergson come to this, with no head about
anything. I have to tell her when to eat and when to go to bed."

"Patience, patience, sister," muttered Ivar as he settled the bit
in the horse's mouth. "When the eyes of the flesh are shut, the
eyes of the spirit are open. She will have a message from those
who are gone, and that will bring her peace. Until then we must
bear with her. You and I are the only ones who have weight with
her. She trusts us."

"How awful it's been these last three months." Signa held the
lantern so that he could see to buckle the straps. "It don't seem
right that we must all be so miserable. Why do we all have to be
punished? Seems to me like good times would never come again."

Ivar expressed himself in a deep sigh, but said nothing. He stooped
and took a sandburr from his toe.

"Ivar," Signa asked suddenly, "will you tell me why you go barefoot?
All the time I lived here in the house I wanted to ask you. Is it
for a penance, or what?"

"No, sister. It is for the indulgence of the body. From my youth
up I have had a strong, rebellious body, and have been subject to
every kind of temptation. Even in age my temptations are prolonged.
It was necessary to make some allowances; and the feet, as I
understand it, are free members. There is no divine prohibition
for them in the Ten Commandments. The hands, the tongue, the eyes,
the heart, all the bodily desires we are commanded to subdue; but
the feet are free members. I indulge them without harm to any
one, even to trampling in filth when my desires are low. They are
quickly cleaned again."

Signa did not laugh. She looked thoughtful as she followed Ivar out
to the wagon-shed and held the shafts up for him, while he backed
in the mare and buckled the hold-backs. "You have been a good
friend to the mistress, Ivar," she murmured.

"And you, God be with you," replied Ivar as he clambered into the
cart and put the lantern under the oilcloth lap-cover. "Now for
a ducking, my girl," he said to the mare, gathering up the reins.

As they emerged from the shed, a stream of water, running off the
thatch, struck the mare on the neck. She tossed her head indignantly,
then struck out bravely on the soft ground, slipping back again and
again as she climbed the hill to the main road. Between the rain
and the darkness Ivar could see very little, so he let Emil's mare
have the rein, keeping her head in the right direction. When the
ground was level, he turned her out of the dirt road upon the sod,
where she was able to trot without slipping.

Before Ivar reached the graveyard, three miles from the house,
the storm had spent itself, and the downpour had died into a soft,
dripping rain. The sky and the land were a dark smoke color, and
seemed to be coming together, like two waves. When Ivar stopped
at the gate and swung out his lantern, a white figure rose from
beside John Bergson's white stone.

The old man sprang to the ground and shuffled toward the gate
calling, "Mistress, mistress!"

Alexandra hurried to meet him and put her hand on his shoulder.
"TYST! Ivar. There's nothing to be worried about. I'm sorry if
I've scared you all. I didn't notice the storm till it was on me,
and I couldn't walk against it. I'm glad you've come. I am so
tired I didn't know how I'd ever get home."

Ivar swung the lantern up so that it shone in her face. "GUD!
You are enough to frighten us, mistress. You look like a drowned
woman. How could you do such a thing!"

Groaning and mumbling he led her out of the gate and helped her
into the cart, wrapping her in the dry blankets on which he had
been sitting.

Alexandra smiled at his solicitude. "Not much use in that, Ivar.
You will only shut the wet in. I don't feel so cold now; but I'm
heavy and numb. I'm glad you came."

Ivar turned the mare and urged her into a sliding trot. Her feet
sent back a continual spatter of mud.

Alexandra spoke to the old man as they jogged along through the
sullen gray twilight of the storm. "Ivar, I think it has done me
good to get cold clear through like this, once. I don't believe
I shall suffer so much any more. When you get so near the dead,
they seem more real than the living. Worldly thoughts leave one.
Ever since Emil died, I've suffered so when it rained. Now that
I've been out in it with him, I shan't dread it. After you once
get cold clear through, the feeling of the rain on you is sweet.
It seems to bring back feelings you had when you were a baby. It
carries you back into the dark, before you were born; you can't
see things, but they come to you, somehow, and you know them and
aren't afraid of them. Maybe it's like that with the dead. If
they feel anything at all, it's the old things, before they were
born, that comfort people like the feeling of their own bed does
when they are little."

"Mistress," said Ivar reproachfully, "those are bad thoughts. The
dead are in Paradise."

Then he hung his head, for he did not believe that Emil was in
Paradise.

When they got home, Signa had a fire burning in the sitting-room
stove. She undressed Alexandra and gave her a hot footbath, while
Ivar made ginger tea in the kitchen. When Alexandra was in bed,
wrapped in hot blankets, Ivar came in with his tea and saw that
she drank it. Signa asked permission to sleep on the slat lounge
outside her door. Alexandra endured their attentions patiently,
but she was glad when they put out the lamp and left her. As she
lay alone in the dark, it occurred to her for the first time that
perhaps she was actually tired of life. All the physical operations
of life seemed difficult and painful. She longed to be free from
her own body, which ached and was so heavy. And longing itself
was heavy: she yearned to be free of that.

As she lay with her eyes closed, she had again, more vividly than
for many years, the old illusion of her girlhood, of being lifted
and carried lightly by some one very strong. He was with her
a long while this time, and carried her very far, and in his arms
she felt free from pain. When he laid her down on her bed again,
she opened her eyes, and, for the first time in her life, she saw
him, saw him clearly, though the room was dark, and his face was
covered. He was standing in the doorway of her room. His white
cloak was thrown over his face, and his head was bent a little
forward. His shoulders seemed as strong as the foundations of the
world. His right arm, bared from the elbow, was dark and gleaming,
like bronze, and she knew at once that it was the arm of the
mightiest of all lovers. She knew at last for whom it was she had
waited, and where he would carry her. That, she told herself, was
very well. Then she went to sleep.

Alexandra wakened in the morning with nothing worse than a hard cold
and a stiff shoulder. She kept her bed for several days, and it
was during that time that she formed a resolution to go to Lincoln
to see Frank Shabata. Ever since she last saw him in the courtroom,
Frank's haggard face and wild eyes had haunted her. The trial had
lasted only three days. Frank had given himself up to the police
in Omaha and pleaded guilty of killing without malice and without
premeditation. The gun was, of course, against him, and the judge
had given him the full sentence,--ten years. He had now been in
the State Penitentiary for a month.

Frank was the only one, Alexandra told herself, for whom anything
could be done. He had been less in the wrong than any of them,
and he was paying the heaviest penalty. She often felt that she
herself had been more to blame than poor Frank. From the time the
Shabatas had first moved to the neighboring farm, she had omitted
no opportunity of throwing Marie and Emil together. Because she
knew Frank was surly about doing little things to help his wife,
she was always sending Emil over to spade or plant or carpenter
for Marie. She was glad to have Emil see as much as possible of an
intelligent, city-bred girl like their neighbor; she noticed that
it improved his manners. She knew that Emil was fond of Marie, but
it had never occurred to her that Emil's feeling might be different
from her own. She wondered at herself now, but she had never
thought of danger in that direction. If Marie had been unmarried,--oh,
yes! Then she would have kept her eyes open. But the mere fact that
she was Shabata's wife, for Alexandra, settled everything. That she was
beautiful, impulsive, barely two years older than Emil, these facts had
had no weight with Alexandra. Emil was a good boy, and only bad boys
ran after married women.

Now, Alexandra could in a measure realize that Marie was, after
all, Marie; not merely a "married woman." Sometimes, when Alexandra
thought of her, it was with an aching tenderness. The moment she
had reached them in the orchard that morning, everything was clear
to her. There was something about those two lying in the grass,
something in the way Marie had settled her cheek on Emil's shoulder,
that told her everything. She wondered then how they could have
helped loving each other; how she could have helped knowing that
they must. Emil's cold, frowning face, the girl's content--Alexandra
had felt awe of them, even in the first shock of her grief.

The idleness of those days in bed, the relaxation of body which
attended them, enabled Alexandra to think more calmly than she had
done since Emil's death. She and Frank, she told herself, were left
out of that group of friends who had been overwhelmed by disaster.
She must certainly see Frank Shabata. Even in the courtroom her
heart had grieved for him. He was in a strange country, he had no
kinsmen or friends, and in a moment he had ruined his life. Being
what he was, she felt, Frank could not have acted otherwise. She
could understand his behavior more easily than she could understand
Marie's. Yes, she must go to Lincoln to see Frank Shabata.

The day after Emil's funeral, Alexandra had written to Carl Linstrum;
a single page of notepaper, a bare statement of what had happened.
She was not a woman who could write much about such a thing, and
about her own feelings she could never write very freely. She knew
that Carl was away from post-offices, prospecting somewhere in the
interior. Before he started he had written her where he expected
to go, but her ideas about Alaska were vague. As the weeks went
by and she heard nothing from him, it seemed to Alexandra that
her heart grew hard against Carl. She began to wonder whether she
would not do better to finish her life alone. What was left of
life seemed unimportant.




Late in the afternoon of a brilliant October day, Alexandra Bergson,
dressed in a black suit and traveling-hat, alighted at the Burlington
depot in Lincoln. She drove to the Lindell Hotel, where she had
stayed two years ago when she came up for Emil's Commencement. In
spite of her usual air of sureness and self-possession, Alexandra
felt ill at ease in hotels, and she was glad, when she went to the
clerk's desk to register, that there were not many people in the
lobby. She had her supper early, wearing her hat and black jacket
down to the dining-room and carrying her handbag. After supper
she went out for a walk.

It was growing dark when she reached the university campus. She
did not go into the grounds, but walked slowly up and down the
stone walk outside the long iron fence, looking through at the young
men who were running from one building to another, at the lights
shining from the armory and the library. A squad of cadets were
going through their drill behind the armory, and the commands of
their young officer rang out at regular intervals, so sharp and
quick that Alexandra could not understand them. Two stalwart girls
came down the library steps and out through one of the iron gates.
As they passed her, Alexandra was pleased to hear them speaking
Bohemian to each other. Every few moments a boy would come running
down the flagged walk and dash out into the street as if he were
rushing to announce some wonder to the world. Alexandra felt a
great tenderness for them all. She wished one of them would stop
and speak to her. She wished she could ask them whether they had
known Emil.

As she lingered by the south gate she actually did encounter one
of the boys. He had on his drill cap and was swinging his books
at the end of a long strap. It was dark by this time; he did not
see her and ran against her. He snatched off his cap and stood
bareheaded and panting. "I'm awfully sorry," he said in a bright,
clear voice, with a rising inflection, as if he expected her to
say something.

"Oh, it was my fault!" said Alexandra eagerly. "Are you an old
student here, may I ask?"

"No, ma'am. I'm a Freshie, just off the farm. Cherry County.
Were you hunting somebody?"

"No, thank you. That is--" Alexandra wanted to detain him. "That
is, I would like to find some of my brother's friends. He graduated
two years ago."

"Then you'd have to try the Seniors, wouldn't you? Let's see; I
don't know any of them yet, but there'll be sure to be some of them
around the library. That red building, right there," he pointed.

"Thank you, I'll try there," said Alexandra lingeringly.

"Oh, that's all right! Good-night." The lad clapped his cap on
his head and ran straight down Eleventh Street. Alexandra looked
after him wistfully.

She walked back to her hotel unreasonably comforted. "What a nice
voice that boy had, and how polite he was. I know Emil was always
like that to women." And again, after she had undressed and was
standing in her nightgown, brushing her long, heavy hair by the
electric light, she remembered him and said to herself, "I don't
think I ever heard a nicer voice than that boy had. I hope he
will get on well here. Cherry County; that's where the hay is so
fine, and the coyotes can scratch down to water."

At nine o'clock the next morning Alexandra presented herself
at the warden's office in the State Penitentiary. The warden was
a German, a ruddy, cheerful-looking man who had formerly been a
harness-maker. Alexandra had a letter to him from the German banker
in Hanover. As he glanced at the letter, Mr. Schwartz put away
his pipe.

"That big Bohemian, is it? Sure, he's gettin' along fine," said
Mr. Schwartz cheerfully.

"I am glad to hear that. I was afraid he might be quarrelsome and
get himself into more trouble. Mr. Schwartz, if you have time, I
would like to tell you a little about Frank Shabata, and why I am
interested in him."

The warden listened genially while she told him briefly something
of Frank's history and character, but he did not seem to find
anything unusual in her account.

"Sure, I'll keep an eye on him. We'll take care of him all right,"
he said, rising. "You can talk to him here, while I go to see to
things in the kitchen. I'll have him sent in. He ought to be done
washing out his cell by this time. We have to keep 'em clean, you
know."

The warden paused at the door, speaking back over his shoulder to
a pale young man in convicts' clothes who was seated at a desk in
the corner, writing in a big ledger.

"Bertie, when 1037 is brought in, you just step out and give this
lady a chance to talk."

The young man bowed his head and bent over his ledger again.

When Mr. Schwartz disappeared, Alexandra thrust her black-edged
handkerchief nervously into her handbag. Coming out on the streetcar
she had not had the least dread of meeting Frank. But since she
had been here the sounds and smells in the corridor, the look of the
men in convicts' clothes who passed the glass door of the warden's
office, affected her unpleasantly.

The warden's clock ticked, the young convict's pen scratched
busily in the big book, and his sharp shoulders were shaken every
few seconds by a loose cough which he tried to smother. It was easy
to see that he was a sick man. Alexandra looked at him timidly,
but he did not once raise his eyes. He wore a white shirt under
his striped jacket, a high collar, and a necktie, very carefully
tied. His hands were thin and white and well cared for, and he had
a seal ring on his little finger. When he heard steps approaching
in the corridor, he rose, blotted his book, put his pen in the rack,
and left the room without raising his eyes. Through the door he
opened a guard came in, bringing Frank Shabata.

"You the lady that wanted to talk to 1037? Here he is. Be on your
good behavior, now. He can set down, lady," seeing that Alexandra
remained standing. "Push that white button when you're through
with him, and I'll come."

The guard went out and Alexandra and Frank were left alone.

Alexandra tried not to see his hideous clothes. She tried to look
straight into his face, which she could scarcely believe was his.
It was already bleached to a chalky gray. His lips were colorless,
his fine teeth looked yellowish. He glanced at Alexandra sullenly,
blinked as if he had come from a dark place, and one eyebrow twitched
continually. She felt at once that this interview was a terrible
ordeal to him. His shaved head, showing the conformation of his
skull, gave him a criminal look which he had not had during the
trial.

Alexandra held out her hand. "Frank," she said, her eyes filling
suddenly, "I hope you'll let me be friendly with you. I understand
how you did it. I don't feel hard toward you. They were more to
blame than you."

Frank jerked a dirty blue handkerchief from his trousers pocket.
He had begun to cry. He turned away from Alexandra. "I never
did mean to do not'ing to dat woman," he muttered. "I never mean
to do not'ing to dat boy. I ain't had not'ing ag'in' dat boy. I
always like dat boy fine. An' then I find him--" He stopped. The
feeling went out of his face and eyes. He dropped into a chair
and sat looking stolidly at the floor, his hands hanging loosely
between his knees, the handkerchief lying across his striped leg.
He seemed to have stirred up in his mind a disgust that had paralyzed
his faculties.

"I haven't come up here to blame you, Frank. I think they were
more to blame than you." Alexandra, too, felt benumbed.

Frank looked up suddenly and stared out of the office window. "I
guess dat place all go to hell what I work so hard on," he said
with a slow, bitter smile. "I not care a damn." He stopped and
rubbed the palm of his hand over the light bristles on his head
with annoyance. "I no can t'ink without my hair," he complained.
"I forget English. We not talk here, except swear."

Alexandra was bewildered. Frank seemed to have undergone a change
of personality. There was scarcely anything by which she could
recognize her handsome Bohemian neighbor. He seemed, somehow, not
altogether human. She did not know what to say to him.

"You do not feel hard to me, Frank?" she asked at last.

Frank clenched his fist and broke out in excitement. "I not feel
hard at no woman. I tell you I not that kind-a man. I never hit
my wife. No, never I hurt her when she devil me something awful!"
He struck his fist down on the warden's desk so hard that he
afterward stroked it absently. A pale pink crept over his neck and
face. "Two, t'ree years I know dat woman don' care no more 'bout
me, Alexandra Bergson. I know she after some other man. I know
her, oo-oo! An' I ain't never hurt her. I never would-a done
dat, if I ain't had dat gun along. I don' know what in hell make
me take dat gun. She always say I ain't no man to carry gun. If
she been in dat house, where she ought-a been--But das a foolish
talk."

Frank rubbed his head and stopped suddenly, as he had stopped
before. Alexandra felt that there was something strange in the way
he chilled off, as if something came up in him that extinguished
his power of feeling or thinking.

"Yes, Frank," she said kindly. "I know you never meant to hurt
Marie."

Frank smiled at her queerly. His eyes filled slowly with tears.
"You know, I most forgit dat woman's name. She ain't got no name
for me no more. I never hate my wife, but dat woman what make me
do dat--Honest to God, but I hate her! I no man to fight. I
don' want to kill no boy and no woman. I not care how many men
she take under dat tree. I no care for not'ing but dat fine boy
I kill, Alexandra Bergson. I guess I go crazy sure 'nough."

Alexandra remembered the little yellow cane she had found in Frank's
clothes-closet. She thought of how he had come to this country a
gay young fellow, so attractive that the prettiest Bohemian girl
in Omaha had run away with him. It seemed unreasonable that life
should have landed him in such a place as this. She blamed Marie
bitterly. And why, with her happy, affectionate nature, should
she have brought destruction and sorrow to all who had loved her,
even to poor old Joe Tovesky, the uncle who used to carry her about
so proudly when she was a little girl? That was the strangest thing
of all. Was there, then, something wrong in being warm-hearted
and impulsive like that? Alexandra hated to think so. But there
was Emil, in the Norwegian graveyard at home, and here was Frank
Shabata. Alexandra rose and took him by the hand.

"Frank Shabata, I am never going to stop trying until I get you
pardoned. I'll never give the Governor any peace. I know I can
get you out of this place."

Frank looked at her distrustfully, but he gathered confidence from
her face. "Alexandra," he said earnestly, "if I git out-a here,
I not trouble dis country no more. I go back where I come from;
see my mother."

Alexandra tried to withdraw her hand, but Frank held on to it
nervously. He put out his finger and absently touched a button
on her black jacket. "Alexandra," he said in a low tone, looking
steadily at the button, "you ain' t'ink I use dat girl awful bad
before--"

"No, Frank. We won't talk about that," Alexandra said, pressing
his hand. "I can't help Emil now, so I'm going to do what I can
for you. You know I don't go away from home often, and I came up
here on purpose to tell you this."

The warden at the glass door looked in inquiringly. Alexandra
nodded, and he came in and touched the white button on his desk.
The guard appeared, and with a sinking heart Alexandra saw Frank
led away down the corridor. After a few words with Mr. Schwartz,
she left the prison and made her way to the street-car. She had
refused with horror the warden's cordial invitation to "go through
the institution." As the car lurched over its uneven roadbed, back
toward Lincoln, Alexandra thought of how she and Frank had been
wrecked by the same storm and of how, although she could come out
into the sunlight, she had not much more left in her life than
he. She remembered some lines from a poem she had liked in her
schooldays:--

   Henceforth the world will only be
   A wider prison-house to me,--

and sighed. A disgust of life weighed upon her heart; some such
feeling as had twice frozen Frank Shabata's features while they
talked together. She wished she were back on the Divide.

When Alexandra entered her hotel, the clerk held up one finger
and beckoned to her. As she approached his desk, he handed her a
telegram. Alexandra took the yellow envelope and looked at it in
perplexity, then stepped into the elevator without opening it. As
she walked down the corridor toward her room, she reflected that
she was, in a manner, immune from evil tidings. On reaching her
room she locked the door, and sitting down on a chair by the dresser,
opened the telegram. It was from Hanover, and it read:--

   Arrived Hanover last night. Shall wait here until you come.
   Please hurry. CARL LINSTRUM.

Alexandra put her head down on the dresser and burst into tears.




The next afternoon Carl and Alexandra were walking across the fields
from Mrs. Hiller's. Alexandra had left Lincoln after midnight,
and Carl had met her at the Hanover station early in the morning.
After they reached home, Alexandra had gone over to Mrs. Hiller's
to leave a little present she had bought for her in the city. They
stayed at the old lady's door but a moment, and then came out to
spend the rest of the afternoon in the sunny fields.

Alexandra had taken off her black traveling suit and put on
a white dress; partly because she saw that her black clothes made
Carl uncomfortable and partly because she felt oppressed by them
herself. They seemed a little like the prison where she had worn
them yesterday, and to be out of place in the open fields. Carl
had changed very little. His cheeks were browner and fuller. He
looked less like a tired scholar than when he went away a year ago,
but no one, even now, would have taken him for a man of business.
His soft, lustrous black eyes, his whimsical smile, would be less
against him in the Klondike than on the Divide. There are always
dreamers on the frontier.

Carl and Alexandra had been talking since morning. Her letter had
never reached him. He had first learned of her misfortune from
a San Francisco paper, four weeks old, which he had picked up in
a saloon, and which contained a brief account of Frank Shabata's
trial. When he put down the paper, he had already made up his
mind that he could reach Alexandra as quickly as a letter could;
and ever since he had been on the way; day and night, by the fastest
boats and trains he could catch. His steamer had been held back
two days by rough weather.

As they came out of Mrs. Hiller's garden they took up their talk
again where they had left it.

"But could you come away like that, Carl, without arranging things?
Could you just walk off and leave your business?" Alexandra asked.

Carl laughed. "Prudent Alexandra! You see, my dear, I happen to
have an honest partner. I trust him with everything. In fact,
it's been his enterprise from the beginning, you know. I'm in it
only because he took me in. I'll have to go back in the spring.
Perhaps you will want to go with me then. We haven't turned up
millions yet, but we've got a start that's worth following. But
this winter I'd like to spend with you. You won't feel that we
ought to wait longer, on Emil's account, will you, Alexandra?"

Alexandra shook her head. "No, Carl; I don't feel that way about
it. And surely you needn't mind anything Lou and Oscar say now.
They are much angrier with me about Emil, now, than about you.
They say it was all my fault. That I ruined him by sending him to
college."

"No, I don't care a button for Lou or Oscar. The moment I knew
you were in trouble, the moment I thought you might need me, it all
looked different. You've always been a triumphant kind of person."
Carl hesitated, looking sidewise at her strong, full figure. "But
you do need me now, Alexandra?"

She put her hand on his arm. "I needed you terribly when it
happened, Carl. I cried for you at night. Then everything seemed
to get hard inside of me, and I thought perhaps I should never care
for you again. But when I got your telegram yesterday, then--then
it was just as it used to be. You are all I have in the world,
you know."

Carl pressed her hand in silence. They were passing the Shabatas'
empty house now, but they avoided the orchard path and took one
that led over by the pasture pond.

"Can you understand it, Carl?" Alexandra murmured. "I have had
nobody but Ivar and Signa to talk to. Do talk to me. Can you
understand it? Could you have believed that of Marie Tovesky? I
would have been cut to pieces, little by little, before I would
have betrayed her trust in me!"

Carl looked at the shining spot of water before them. "Maybe she
was cut to pieces, too, Alexandra. I am sure she tried hard; they
both did. That was why Emil went to Mexico, of course. And he was
going away again, you tell me, though he had only been home three
weeks. You remember that Sunday when I went with Emil up to
the French Church fair? I thought that day there was some kind
of feeling, something unusual, between them. I meant to talk to
you about it. But on my way back I met Lou and Oscar and got so
angry that I forgot everything else. You mustn't be hard on them,
Alexandra. Sit down here by the pond a minute. I want to tell
you something."

They sat down on the grass-tufted bank and Carl told her how he had
seen Emil and Marie out by the pond that morning, more than a year
ago, and how young and charming and full of grace they had seemed
to him. "It happens like that in the world sometimes, Alexandra,"
he added earnestly. "I've seen it before. There are women who
spread ruin around them through no fault of theirs, just by being
too beautiful, too full of life and love. They can't help it.
People come to them as people go to a warm fire in winter. I used
to feel that in her when she was a little girl. Do you remember
how all the Bohemians crowded round her in the store that day, when
she gave Emil her candy? You remember those yellow sparks in her
eyes?"

Alexandra sighed. "Yes. People couldn't help loving her. Poor
Frank does, even now, I think; though he's got himself in such
a tangle that for a long time his love has been bitterer than his
hate. But if you saw there was anything wrong, you ought to have
told me, Carl."

Carl took her hand and smiled patiently. "My dear, it was something
one felt in the air, as you feel the spring coming, or a storm in
summer. I didn't SEE anything. Simply, when I was with those two
young things, I felt my blood go quicker, I felt--how shall I say
it?--an acceleration of life. After I got away, it was all too
delicate, too intangible, to write about."

Alexandra looked at him mournfully. "I try to be more liberal
about such things than I used to be. I try to realize that we are
not all made alike. Only, why couldn't it have been Raoul Marcel,
or Jan Smirka? Why did it have to be my boy?"

"Because he was the best there was, I suppose. They were both the
best you had here."

The sun was dropping low in the west when the two friends rose and
took the path again. The straw-stacks were throwing long shadows,
the owls were flying home to the prairie-dog town. When they came
to the corner where the pastures joined, Alexandra's twelve young
colts were galloping in a drove over the brow of the hill.

"Carl," said Alexandra, "I should like to go up there with you in
the spring. I haven't been on the water since we crossed the ocean,
when I was a little girl. After we first came out here I used
to dream sometimes about the shipyard where father worked, and a
little sort of inlet, full of masts." Alexandra paused. After a
moment's thought she said, "But you would never ask me to go away
for good, would you?"

"Of course not, my dearest. I think I know how you feel about this
country as well as you do yourself." Carl took her hand in both
his own and pressed it tenderly.

"Yes, I still feel that way, though Emil is gone. When I was on
the train this morning, and we got near Hanover, I felt something
like I did when I drove back with Emil from the river that time,
in the dry year. I was glad to come back to it. I've lived here
a long time. There is great peace here, Carl, and freedom....
I thought when I came out of that prison, where poor Frank is,
that I should never feel free again. But I do, here." Alexandra
took a deep breath and looked off into the red west.

"You belong to the land," Carl murmured, "as you have always said.
Now more than ever."

"Yes, now more than ever. You remember what you once said about
the graveyard, and the old story writing itself over? Only it is
we who write it, with the best we have."

They paused on the last ridge of the pasture, overlooking the
house and the windmill and the stables that marked the site of John
Bergson's homestead. On every side the brown waves of the earth
rolled away to meet the sky.

"Lou and Oscar can't see those things," said Alexandra suddenly.
"Suppose I do will my land to their children, what difference will
that make? The land belongs to the future, Carl; that's the way
it seems to me. How many of the names on the county clerk's plat
will be there in fifty years? I might as well try to will the
sunset over there to my brother's children. We come and go, but
the land is always here. And the people who love it and understand
it are the people who own it--for a little while."

Carl looked at her wonderingly. She was still gazing into the west,
and in her face there was that exalted serenity that sometimes came
to her at moments of deep feeling. The level rays of the sinking
sun shone in her clear eyes.

"Why are you thinking of such things now, Alexandra?"

"I had a dream before I went to Lincoln--But I will tell you about
that afterward, after we are married. It will never come true,
now, in the way I thought it might." She took Carl's arm and they
walked toward the gate. "How many times we have walked this path
together, Carl. How many times we will walk it again! Does it seem
to you like coming back to your own place? Do you feel at peace
with the world here? I think we shall be very happy. I haven't
any fears. I think when friends marry, they are safe. We don't
suffer like--those young ones." Alexandra ended with a sigh.

They had reached the gate. Before Carl opened it, he drew Alexandra
to him and kissed her softly, on her lips and on her eyes.

She leaned heavily on his shoulder. "I am tired," she murmured.
"I have been very lonely, Carl."

They went into the house together, leaving the Divide behind them,
under the evening star. Fortunate country, that is one day to
receive hearts like Alexandra's into its bosom, to give them out
again in the yellow wheat, in the rustling corn, in the shining
eyes of youth!

 Shortly after Emil's death, Signa worries to Ivar that Alexandra has gone out in the rain. Ivar knows he will find her at the graveyard and hitches up a horse. Signa asks him why he doesn't wear shoes and he explains that the Bible governs all the body but the feet, so he lets them do as they wish. Signa responds to this enigmatic reply by saying that he is a good friend to his mistress. At the graveyard Ivar sees Alexandra rise from her father's grave. She tells Ivar that she feels better about Emil after the rain: she feels as though being dead must be just like before you were born. Ivar reproaches her for doubting that the dead are in heaven, but than stops, for he does not believe these dead are in heaven. At home, Signa comforts Alexandra and puts her to bed as if she were a child. As Alexandra drifts to sleep, she has her old dream. She feels that she opens her eyes and sees her rescuer in a white cloak with his face covered. "His right arm, bared from the elbow, was dark and gleaming, like bronze, and she knew at once that it was the arm of the mightiest of all lovers." The next morning Alexandra wakes with a bad cold, which keeps her in bed for several days. She decides to go see Frank Shabata, who is serving ten years in Lincoln. His trial had been quick, for he had given himself up to the police and confessed. Alexandra feels that Frank is "less in the wrong than any of them, and...was paying the heaviest penalty," and feels him to be her last link to the people she cared for most. She has written Carl Linstrum without receiving an answer-probably due to his remote location-and her heart slowly closes to him. Alexandra blames herself for encouraging Emil and Marie's friendship, recalling that she had thought of Marie as a married woman beyond the possibility of a love affair. At the same time, Alexandra knows that the two couldn't have helped loving each other. In Lincoln, Alexandra stays at the hotel she used when Emil graduated from college. After a day of searching foolishly for students who might have known Emil, Alexandra goes to see Frank the next morning. She tries to tell the warden, Mr. Schwartz, about Frank's situation, but he finds nothing unusual in it. Alexandra waits in the miserable prison while Mr. Schwartz fetches Frank. When he appears, Frank's appearance-shaved head and prison clothes-horrifies Alexandra. He look like a criminal and stares with glassy eyes. Alexandra expresses her sympathy for him as Frank rambles oddly, declaring that he doesn't blame Marie. Alexandra both blames and exculpates Marie, believing that her sin is unforgivable yet unable to think of Marie as wrong. As she rises to leave, Alexandra tells Frank that she is going to pursue a governor's pardon. Frank catches her hand and asks her whether she thinks he drove Marie to it, but Alexandra cuts him off. Back at her hotel, Alexandra receives a telegram from Carl Linstrum, who returned after reading about the murder in a newspaper. Early the next morning she meets Carl in Hanover and they return to her home. Carl explains to Alexandra that he is doing well as a prospector and wishes Alexandra to come with him to Alaska. She tells him she doesn't want to wait any longer, and they decide that they need each other, despite her brother's insults and oppositions. Alexandra asks Carl if he understands how Marie and Emil's love happened, because she still cannot. Carl says that he's sure Emil and Marie tried terribly hard to resist temptation, and that that's why Emil left for Mexico and was leaving again. He insists that she isn't to blame for cultivating their connection; she merely "spread ruin around them through no fault of " and consoles her in her grief and confusion. Alexandra tells Carl that she will follow him to Alaska in the spring, but that she wants to come back to the Divide, saying that despite her misfortunes the land still makes her feel "free." She thinks aloud that Lou and Oscar don't feel the way that she does about the land, but she might as well leave it to their children, for the land truly belongs only to those who "love it and understand it." She looks out into the sun and when Carl asks what she's thinking, she tells him she's thinking of a dream she had before, one that can't come true now, which she will tell him about after their marriage. She says that she knows they will be happy, for their marriage is based on friendship, not the feelings of "those young ones." Carl reaches out and kisses her lips and eyes. She leans on him and tells him she's tired and she's been very lonely. They walk into her house together, out of the Divide.

