er only to lose him!"

But Jack was hardly conscious of the philosopher's words. In that
interval he had still another glimpse of Mary's eyes without the veil and
saw deeper than he had before; saw vast solitudes, inviting yet offering
no invitation, where bright streams seemed to flash and sing under the
sunlight and then disappear in a desert. That was her farewell to the
easy traveller who had stopped to do her a favor on the trail. And he
seemed to ask nothing more in that spellbound second; nor did he after
the veil had fallen, and he acquitted himself of some spoken form of
thanks for an evening of happiness.

"A pleasant journey!" Mary said.

"Luck, Sir Chaps, luck!" called Jasper Ewold.

Jack's easy stride, as he passed out into the night, confirmed the last
glimpse of his smiling, whimsical "I don't care" attitude, which never
minded the danger sign on the precipice's edge.

"He does not really want to go back to New York," Mary remarked, and was
surprised to find that she had spoken her thought aloud.

"I hardly agree with that opinion," said her father absently, his
thoughts far afield from the fetter of his words. "But of one thing I am
sure, John Wingfield! A smile and a square chin!"

VI

OBLIVION IS NOT EASY

"A smile and a square chin!" Mary repeated, as they went back into the
living-room.

"Yes, hasn't he both, this Wingfield?" asked her father.

"This Wingfield"--on the finish of the sentence there was a halting,
appreciable accent. He moved toward the table with the listlessness of
some enormous automaton of a man to whom every step of existence was a
step in a treadmill. There was a heavy sadness about his features which
rarely came, and always startled her when it did come with a fear that
they had so set in gloom that they would never change. He raised his hand
to the wick screw of the lamp, waiting for her to pass through the room
before turning off the flame which bathed him in its rays, giving him the
effect of a Rodinesque incarnation of memory.

Any melancholy that beset him was her own enemy, to be fought and
cajoled. Mary slipped to his side, dropping her head on his shoulder and
patting his cheek. But this magic which had so frequently rallied him
brought only a transient, hazy smile and in its company what seemed a
random thought.

"And you and he came down the pass together? Yes, yes!" he said. His tone
had the vagueness of one drawing in from the sea a net that s