had added the spark to the powder. She realized her blunder when it
was too late. And the fact that she did not regret it very much, and
seemed to have lost herself in a defiant, reckless spell, warned her
again that she, too, was answering to the wildness of the time and
place. Joan's intelligence had broadened wonderfully in this period
of her life, just as all her feelings had quickened. If gold had
developed and intensified and liberated the worst passions of men,
so the spirit of that atmosphere had its baneful effect upon her.
Joan deplored this, yet she had the keenness to understand that it
was nature fitting her to survive.

Back upon her fell that weight of suspense--what would happen next?
Here in Alder Creek there did not at present appear to be the same
peril which had menaced her before, but she would suffer through
fatality to Cleve or Kells. And these two slept at night under a
shadow that held death, and by day they walked on a thin crust over
a volcano. Joan grew more and more fearful of the disclosures made
when Kells met his men nightly in the cabin. She feared to hear, but
she must hear, and even if she had not felt it necessary to keep
informed of events, the fascination of the game would have impelled
her to listen. And gradually the suspense she suffered augmented
into a magnified, though vague, assurance of catastrophe, of
impending doom. She could not shake off the gloomy presentiment.
Something terrible was going to happen. An experience begun as
tragically as hers could only end in a final and annihilating
stroke. Yet hope was unquenchable, and with her fear kept pace a
driving and relentless spirit.

One night at the end of a week of these interviews, when Joan
attempted to resist Jim, to plead with him, lest in his growing