CHAPTER XLI
Avalanche
WHEN Alan Law denied her and would have none of her, when he threw himself off into the storm rather than endure association with her in the shelter of the rock, Judith Trine, whose nature Love was strangely altering, swallowed her chagrin and followed him with the solicitude of one whose love can recognize no wrong in its object. Through all the remainder of that day of terror she was never far from his side, never out of touch with him, though she did not again offer to touch him after that first rebuff.
What did it matter? she asked herself. All along she had known that he could never love her, that his love was pledged to her own sister Rose. So why should she complain if he despised and rebuffed her, preferred the fury of the tempest to refuge from it in her company? Her love was no less sweet to her for that. And she could not forget that he had come in search of her, spurred inexorably by that sentiment in his nature which would not let him spare himself while a woman needed to be served.
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