This was succeeded by a consciousness of the delicate flattery implied in their indirect influence over the men who had undoubtedly risked their lives for the sake of remaining with them.

The best woman is not above being touched by the effect of her power over the worst man, and Kate at first allowed herself to think of Falkner in that light.

But if in her later reflections he suffered as a heroic experience to be forgotten, he gained something as an actual man to be remembered.

Now that the proposed rides from "his friend's house" were a part of the illusion, would he ever dare to visit them again?
Would she dare to see him?
She held her breath with a sudden pain of parting that was new to her; she tried to think of something else, to pick up the scattered threads of her life before that eventful day.

But in vain; that one week had filled the place with implacable memories, or more terrible, as it seemed to her and her sister, they had both lost their feeble, alien hold upon Eagle's Court in the sudden presence of the real genii of these solitudes, and henceforth they alone would be the strangers there.
They scarcely dared to confess it to each other, but this return to the dazzling sunlight and cloudless skies of the past appeared to them to be the one unreal experience; they had never known the true wild flavor of their home, except in that week of delicious isolation.