d have translated its deep intendment. She said no word, and
he merely lifted his hat ceremoniously and once more bent his eyes on his
book.

She was like a thing long imprisoned, liberated by some happy chance. Her
feet seemed scarcely to touch the ground as she sped along down the
ravine, then across the rustic bridge that spanned the chasm through
which rushed the tumultuous mountain stream foaming among the boulders
deep in its depths, and breaking ever and anon into crystal cascades. On
the opposite side she soon struck into the mountain road that had been
graded and tamed and improved by the hotel management into the aspect of
a sophisticated driveway, as it swept up to the great flight of steps at
the main entrance of the big white building.

IV.

The vacant hotel, bereft of the pleasure-seeking crowds whose presence
seemed the essential condition of its existence, looked strangely
sinister in the silent golden splendor of the clearing afternoon, with
its tiers of deserted piazzas, its band-stand mute and empty, the
observatory perched above the precipice, seemingly so precarious as to
have all the effect of teetering in the wind.

Languid now, preoccupied, Lillian ascended the long flight of steps to
the piazza and paused to look out at the great spread of the landscape,
wreathed in flying mists and of a different aspect from this increase of
elevation. She had begun to stroll aimlessly along in the possession of
the seclusion she craved, when she suddenly noted the fact that the front
door stood a trifle ajar. She paused with a repugnant sense of a lapse of
caution. Then she reflected that bolts and locks could add but little
security in a desert solitude like this, where a marauder might work his
will from September to June with no witnesses but the clouds and winds to
hinder. She had forgotten the insistent declaration of Gladys that she
had seen a light flicker from these blank windows the preceding night.
Indeed, even at the time she had accounted it but the hysteric adjunct of
their panic in the illusion of a stealthy step on the veranda of the
bungalow. She was animated only by the simplest impulse of idle curiosity
when she laid her hand on the bolt. The big door swung open at once on
well-oiled hinges, and she found herself in the spacious hotel office, on
one side of which were the clerk's desk and the office clock, looking
queerly disconsolate without the