tinuance of this intimacy, but she had not
forgotten the rash speech. Had the recollections been all upon her own
side she might have permitted a partial renewal of the companionship,
but she became forbidding at once when Geoffrey ventured to remind her
of it.

"Yes," she said reflectively. "The sunsets were often impressive, but
we are all of us unstable, and what pleases us at one time may well
prove tiresome at another. If that experience were repeated I should
very possibly grow sadly discontented at Graham's ranch."

Geoffrey was not only shrewd enough to comprehend that, if Miss Savine
unbent during a summer holiday in the wilderness, it did not follow
that she would always do so, but he felt that he deserved the rebuke.
He had, however, learned patience in Canada, and was content to bide
his time, so he answered good-humoredly that such a result might well
be possible. They were silent until they halted where the hillside
fell sharply to the verge of a cliff. Far down below Thurston could
see the white pebbles shine through translucent water, and with
professional instincts aroused, he dubiously surveyed the slope to the
head of the crag.

Julius Savine, or somebody under his orders, had constructed a zig-zag
pathway which wound down between small maples and clusters of
wine-berries shimmering like blood-drops among their glossy leaves. In
places the pathway was underpinned with timber against the side of an
almost sheer descent, and he noticed that one could have dropped a
vertical line from the fish-hawk, which hung poised a few feet outside
one angle, into the water. They descended cautiously to the first
sharp bend, and here Geoffrey turned around in advance of his
companion. "Do you mind telling me how long it is since you or anybody
else has used this path, Miss Savine?" he inquired.

"I came up this way last autumn, and think hardly any other person has
used it since. But why do you ask?" was the reply.

"I fancied so!" Geoffrey lapsed instinctively into his brusque,
professional style of comment. "Poor system of underpinning, badly
fixed yonder. I am afraid you must find some other way down to the
beach this morning."

It was long since Helen had heard anybody apply the word "must" to
herself. As Julius Savine's only daughter, most of her wishes had been
immediately gratified, while the men she met vied with one another in
paying her homage. In addition to this, her father, in whose