oth
forehead; nor such marvellous whiteness of skin and pure blue depths of
eyes! In her he saw now everything that was strong and splendid in woman.
She was not girlishly sweet. She was not a girl. She was a woman--glorious
to look at, a soul glowing out of her eyes, a strength that thrilled him in
the quiet and beautiful mystery of her face.

"You were going without saying good-bye," she said. "Won't you let me thank
you--a last time?"

Her voice brought him to himself again. A moment he bent over her hand. A
moment he felt its warm, firm pressure in his own. The smile that flashed
to his lips was hidden from her as he bowed his blond-gray head.

"Pardon me for the omission," he apologized. "Good-bye--and may good luck
go with you!"

Their eyes met once more. With another bow he had turned, and was
continuing his way. At the door Joanne Gray looked back. He was whistling
again. His careless, easy stride was filled with a freedom that seemed to
come to her in the breath of the mountains. And then she, too, smiled
strangely as she reentered the tent.

CHAPTER III

If John Aldous had betrayed no visible sign of inward vanquishment he at
least was feeling its effect. For years his writings had made him the
target for a world of women, and many men. The men he had regarded with
indifferent toleration. The women were his life--the "frail and ineffective
creatures" who gave spice to his great adventure, and made his days
anything but monotonous. He was not unchivalrous. Deep down in his
heart--and this was his own secret--he did not even despise women. But he
had seen their weaknesses and their frailties as perhaps no other man had
ever seen them, and he had written of them as no other man had ever
written. This had brought him the condemnation of the host, the admiration
of the few. His own personal veneer of antagonism against woman was purely
artificial, and yet only a few had guessed it. He had built it up about him
as a sort of protection. He called himself "an adventurer in the mysteries
of feminism," and to be this successfully he had argued that he must
destroy in himself the usual heart-emotions of the sex-man and the animal.

How far he had succeeded in this he himself did not know--until these last
moments when he had bid good-bye to Joanne Gray. He confessed that she had
found a cleft in his armour, and there was an uneasy thrill in his blood.
It was not her beauty alone that had affected him. He h