Her speech was frank, but incoherent, and all he gleaned from it was that the event, whatever it was, had happened years before.

Also, he gleaned that she had loved the man.
That was the thing--love.

It caused the trouble.

It was more terrible than frost or famine.

Women were all very well, in themselves good to look upon and likable; but along came this thing called love, and they were seared to the bone by it, made so irrational that one could never guess what they would do next.
This Freda-woman was a splendid creature, full-bodied, beautiful, and nobody's fool; but love had come along and soured her on the world, driving her to the Klondike and to suicide so compellingly that she was made to hate the man that saved her life.
Well, he had escaped love so far, just as he had escaped smallpox; yet there it was, as contagious as smallpox, and a whole lot worse in running its course.