lower
garden," he said.

And why she knew not, but the fact had come as something definite and
settled: she was no longer dizzy or uncertain. Calmly, in the triumph of
mind over fear, in the glory of a new sensation of power, she looked down
into that gulf of shadows--looked down for a thousand feet, where the
narrowing, sheer walls merged into darkness.

From this pit to the blue above there was only infinite silence, with no
movement but his pulse-beat which she could feel in his wrist
distinctly. He had her fast, a pawn of one of his impulses. A shiver of
revolt ran through her. He had taken this liberty because she had shown
weakness. And she was not weak. She had come to the precipice to prove
that she was not.

"Thank you. My little tremor of horror has passed," she told him. "I can
stand without help, now."

He released his hold and she stood quite free of him, a glance flashing
her independence. Smilingly she looked down and smilingly and
triumphantly back at him.

"You need not keep your arm up in that fashion ready to assist me. It
is tiring," she said, with a touch of her old fire of banter over the
barrier. "I am all right, now. I don't know what gave me that giddy
turn--probably sitting still so long and looking out at the blaze of
the desert."

He swept her with a look of admiration; and their eyes meeting, she
looked back into the abyss.

"I wish I had such courage," he said with sudden, tense earnestness;
"courage to master my revulsion against shadows."

"Perhaps it will come like an inspiration," she answered
uncomprehendingly.

Then both were silent until she spoke of a stunted little pine three or
four hundred feet down, in the crotch of an outcropping. Its sinking
roots had split a rock, over which the other roots sprawled in gnarly
persistence. Some passing bird had dropped the seed which had found a bed
in a pocket of dust from the erosions of time. So it had grown and set up
housekeeping in its isolation, even as the community of Little Rivers had
in a desert basin beside a water-course.

"The little pine has courage--the courage of the dwarf," she said. "It is
worth more than a whole forest of its majestic cousins in Maine. How
green it is--greener than they!"

"But they rise straight to heaven in their majesty!" he returned, to make
controversy.

"Yes, out of the ease of their rich beds!"

"In a crowd and waiting for the axe!"

"And this one, in its isolation, creating somet