d
of the window which looked from the room out to the westward, and far
over the brown shoulders of the foothills rose the Rockies, majestic,
calm, imperturbable, their white summits flashing in the blaze of
autumn sunshine. "No warfare there," Irene went on. "No plotting, no
cruelty, no cowardice, no misunderstanding. And to think that they
will stand there forever; forever, as we know time; when our city, our
civilization, the very memory of our age shall have gone out. I never
look at them without feeling how--how--how----"

She trembled, and her voice choked; she put out her arm to a chair.
When she turned her face there were tears on it. . . . "Tell
me,--Edith," she said. . . . "You know" . . .

"I know some things," Edith managed to say. "I know, _now_, that I do
not know all. Dave and I are old friends--my father took a liking to
him and he used often to be in our house--he made him think of our own
boy that was killed and would have been just his age--and we got to
know each other very well and he told me about you, long ago. And last
night I found him at his rooms, almost mad, and swearing to shoot
Conward. And then he told me that--that----"

"Yes? Yes? What did he tell you? I am not afraid----"

Edith turned her eyes to where the white crests of the mountains cut
like a crumpled keel through a sea of infinite blue. "He told me he
saw Conward here . . . upstairs . . . and Conward made a boast . . .
and he would have shot him but you rushed upon him and begged him not
to. He said you would have taken the bullet yourself rather than it
should find Conward."

"Oh, oh," the girl cried, in the pain of one mortally hurt. "How could
he think that? I didn't care for him--for Conward--but for Dave. I
knew there had been a quarrel--I didn't know why--and I knew if Dave
shot him--and he _can_ shoot--I've seen him break six bottles out of
six on the gallop--it wasn't self-defence--whatever it was he couldn't
plead that--and they'd hang him, and that was all I saw, Edith, that
was all I saw, and I would--yes I _would_ rather have taken the bullet
myself than that that should happen----"

"You poor girl!" said Edith. "You poor girl," and her arms found the
other's neck. "You have been hurt, hurt." And then, under her breath,
"More than me."

. . . "What has he done?"

"He talked his problems over with me, and after he had talked awhile he
became more reasonable. He had already been convinced