t was maddening that she would
not--could not, perhaps?--live up to that goddess-on-the-mountain-top
look she had sometimes.

"I don't know anything about it except that it's hard luck for us
both."

"Well, what--?" She paused in the act of putting away her
first-aid-to-the-complexion implements, and looked at him with her
wide, purple eyes. "Why, you cross, mean, little stingy boy, you! You
can have your old peak then. I'll go down and jump in the lake." She
began to climb down from the little pinnacle quite as if she meant to
do exactly as she said.

"Aw, come out of it!" Jack tried not to turn and look at her
anxiously, but he was a human being.

"I'm not in it--yet," Marion retorted with dark meaning, and jumped to
the ground.

"Hey! you wanta break a leg?" He swung toward her.

"Just to spite you, I wouldn't mind. Only you'd throw me down there
amongst all those rocks and trees and make it my neck. Oh, would you
look at that!"

"That" happened to be Mount Lassen, belching forth a stupendous column
of ashes and smoke. Up, up, up it went, as though it meant to go on
and on into infinity. Jack had seen it too often to be affected as he
had been that first night. He looked at Marion instead. She was
standing with her hands clinched by her side, and her breath sucking
in. As the black column mounted higher and higher, she lifted herself
to her toes, posing there absolutely unconscious of herself. Jack saw
her face grow pale; saw her eyes darken and glow with inner
excitement. She was once more the goddess on the mountain top, gazing
down at one of the wonders she had wrought. It was as though she
pulled that black column up and up and up with the tensity of her
desire.

The column mushroomed suddenly, rolling out in great, puffy billows
before it dipped and went streaming away on the wind. The mountain
beneath it spewed sluggish masses of vapor and ashes up into the black
moil above, until the whole mountain was obscured and only an angry,
rolling cloud churning lumpishly there, told what was hidden beneath.

Marion relaxed, took a long, deep breath and settled again to her trim
heels. She was not filled with terror as Jack had been; though that
may have been because she was not cast up here like a piece of
driftwood out of her world, nor was she alone. But Jack paid her the
tribute of bowing mentally before her splendid courage. She gazed a
while longer, awed ecstasy in her face. Then slowly she swung and