nto the pathway, slanted his wise head, plumed
in splendor, to find whether she were friend or enemy, saw that she
made no move, and fell to foraging among the leaves. She had sat so
long and so quietly that the little people of the ground were
accepting her as part of the landscape. She began dimly to perceive
these things, to take joy in them. And then they colored her mood.

What was she but a young, female thing, a vessel of life universal?
What was her attraction toward Bertram Chester but a part of the
great, holy force which made and moved hills, trees, the little people
of hills and trees? What was she, to have resisted the impulse in her
because of a few imperfections, a little lack of development in
civilized morals?

Her perception of nature died away, but the slant which it had given
her thoughts persisted.

When she felt and spoke as she had done that night in the Man Far Low,
she was unwholesome, super-refined, super-civilized--she was
proceeding by the hothouse morals which she had learned in books and
in European studios. When she felt as she did on that first night
under the bay tree, she was wholesome and eternally right.

How much greater in her, after all, if she had followed the call, had
taken him for the man in him, to develop, to guide as a woman may
guide! Ah, by what token could she call him back?

Her gaze of meditation had been fixed on the road below. She had been
half-consciously aware for some time of a figure which lost itself
behind one of the hill-turns, reappeared again, became wholly visible
in a band of late afternoon sunshine.

It was Bertram Chester. The vision came without any shock of first
surprise. He had been so much part of her thoughts that it seemed the
most natural presence in the world. He was swinging along the road in
her direction, heaving his massive shoulders with every stride; he
stopped, took off his cap, wiped his forehead with a motion which,
seen even at that distance, conveyed all his masculinity, and strode
on again.

Would he keep on along the road, or would he turn toward her up the
Santa Eliza trail? And if he did keep on, would those roving eyes of
his perceive her sitting there? Why not leave everything to that
chance? If he looked up and saw her there on her rock, if he turned
into the trail and passed her--that was a sign. She found herself,
nevertheless, humanly striving to cheat fortune and the gods by
fixing all her mind and eyes upon him, a