At last she quivered up to her knees as if lashed to action.

It seemed that first kiss of Isbel's, cool and gentle and timid, was on her lips.

And her eyes closed and hot tears welled from under her lids.

Her groping hands found only the dead twigs and the pine boughs of the trees.

Had she reached out to clasp him?
Then hard and violent on her mouth and cheek and neck burned those other kisses of Isbel's, and with the flashing, stinging memory came the truth that now she would have bartered her soul for them.
Utterly she surrendered to the resistlessness of this love.