acked up there full, to run the oil stove in the corner. The
spring--he had to take his bucket and go down with her and show her
where the spring was, but he did not seem to mind that, either. The
flag, whipping over the station on its short staff, interested her
too, and he helped her guess how long it would be before the stars and
stripes snapped themselves to ribbons. The book on astronomy she
dipped into, turning it to look at the full-page illustrations of
certain constellations that were to Jack like old friends. The books
on forestry she glanced at, and the magazines she inspected with less
interest.

"Oh, I've got the latest movie magazines. I could bring them up
sometime if you like--or send them by the man who brings your stuff
up, if you'll tell him to stop at the cabin."

"You bring them yourself," Jack urged, his eagerness so open and
unashamed that Marion blushed, and suddenly remembered Kate down the
slope there waiting for her. She must go, she said; and she went,
almost as suddenly as she came, and never mentioned her half-formed
determination to wait up there for the sunset.

Jack went with her as far as he dared, and stood under a wind-tortured
balsam fir and watched her out of sight. On the last ledge before the
trail dipped down over the hump that would hide her for good, she
turned and looked up at him. She stood there poised--so it
seemed--between mountain-crest and the sky. The lake lay quiet and
shadowed, deep below her, as though God had dropped a tear and the
mountain was holding it reverently cupped, sheltering it from the keen
winds of the heights. Beyond, painted with the delicate shadings of
distance and yellow sunlight, Indian Valley lay quietly across the lap
of the world, its farms and roads and fences sketched in lightly, as
with the swift pencil strokes of an artist; its meandering,
willowfringed streams making contrast with the yellowed fields of
early harvest time.

She stood there poised like a bird on the rim of the world. Her
slimness, her sure grace, her yellow hair shining under the beach hat
she wore tilted back from her face, struck him like a blow in the face
from that pleasurable past wherein woman beauty had been so abundant.
She was of the town; moreover, he felt that she was of the town from
which he had fled in guilt and terror. She stood for a long minute,
taking in the full sweep of the rugged peak. She was not looking at
him especially, until she turned to go on