picture
of Lion's Head to himself in the dim light. The voices of Mrs. Durgin
and Cynthia came to him from the dining-room, and from the kitchen
beyond, with the occasional clash of crockery, and the clang of iron
upon iron about the stove, and the quick tread of women's feet upon the
bare floor. With these pleasant noises came the smell of cooking, and
later there was an opening and shutting of doors, with a thrill of the
freezing air from without, and the dull thumping of Whitwell's rubber
boots, and the quicker flapping of Jombateeste's soft leathern soles.
Then there was the sweep of skirted feet at the parlor door, and Cynthia
Whitwell came in without perceiving him. She went to the table by the
darkening window, and quickly turned up the light of the lamp. In her
ignorance of his presence, he saw her as if she had been alone, almost
as if she were out of the body; he received from her unconsciousness
the impression of something rarely pure and fine, and he had a sudden
compassion for her, as for something precious that is fated to be wasted
or misprized. At a little movement which he made to relieve himself from
a sense of eavesdropping, she gave a start, and shut her lips upon the
little cry that would have escaped from another sort of woman.

"I didn't know you were here," she said; and she flushed with the
shyness of him which she always showed at first. She had met him already
with the rest, but they had scarcely spoken together; and he knew of the
struggle she must now be making with herself when she went on: "I didn't
know you had been called. I thought you were still sleeping."

"Yes. I seemed to sleep for centuries," said West over, "and I woke up
feeling coeval with Lion's Head. But I hope to grow younger again."

She faltered, and then she asked: "Did you see the light on it when the
sun went down?"

"I wish I hadn't. I could never get that light--even if it ever came
again."

"It's there every afternoon, when it's clear."

"I'm sorry for that; I shall have to try for it, then."

"Wasn't that what you came for?" she asked, by one of the efforts she
was making with everything she said. He could have believed he saw the
pulse throbbing in her neck. But she held herself stone-still, and he
divined her resolution to conquer herself, if she should die for it.

"Yes, I came for that," said Westover. "That's what makes it so
dismaying. If I had only happened on it, I shouldn't have been
responsible for