blurred vision of her brother, smiling
resolutely, till his back was turned: and he departed townward;--a
lonely brown figure, to which a slight stoop of the shoulders lent an
added air of pathos.

Quita sat looking after him, her stillness belying the clash of
emotions at her heart.

That vanishing figure on the sunlit road stood for all that she knew
and loved best in the world: for Art, independence, good comradeship:
for the happy, irresponsible, hand-to-mouth life of Bohemia: for the
Past, dear and familiar, as a well-loved voice: while the quiet man at
her side,--whose mere presence suggested latent force, and gave her a
sense of protection wholly new to her,--stood for the Future; the
undiscovered country, peopled with possibilities, dark and bright. And
Quita Lenox, being blest, or curst, with the insight and detached
spirit of the artist, saw clearly that the Great Experiment held, for
her, a large element of hazard; that she had staked her all upon a turn
of the wheel, with what resulting Time alone could show.

Her husband's hand on her arm brought reflection abruptly to an end.

"He is almost out of sight now," Lenox said quietly. "And I think it's
time we made a start. Will you come?"

She turned to him at once, with a smile whose April quality heightened
its charm.

"Of course I will; and gladly. Don't think me horrid, Eldred. I have
always been frank with you, haven't I? And . . . it _is_ a wrench
leaving Michael to live and work alone."

"I quite understand that: and I value your devotion to him for selfish
reasons. It proves what you may be capable of feeling . . . for me,
one of these days."

The mingled dignity and humility of his tone so moved her that her only
answer was an impulsive pressure of the hand resting on her arm: and
they went forward for a long while without further speech, the muleteer
having set off for the summit by a series of short cuts known to his
kind.

Before long massed pines were above and below them; their jagged stems
and branches sharply imprinted on stretches of sunlit glacier, and on
the pathway in mottled patches of shadow.

Eldred Lenox walked close to his wife, one hand resting on the crupper
behind her. The man's intensity of feeling did not rise readily to the
surface; and a certain proud sensitiveness, the cardinal weakness of
big natures, withheld him from the full expression of an emotion to
which she could not adequately respond. He was cont