down opposite Bee Rock, and for the first time Grayson told me
of that last scene with her. He spoke without bitterness, and he told
me what she said, word for word, without a breath of blame for her. I
do not believe that he judged her at all; she did not know--he always
said; she did not KNOW; and then, when I opened my lips, Grayson
reached silently for my wrist, and I can feel again the warning crush
of his fingers, and I say nothing against her now.

I asked Grayson what his answer was.

"I asked her," he said, solemnly, "if she had ever seen a purple
rhododendron."

I almost laughed, picturing the scene--the girl bewildered by his
absurd question--Grayson calm, superbly courteous. It was a mental
peculiarity of his--this irrelevancy--and it was like him to end a
matter of life and death in just that way.

"I told her I should send her one. I am waiting for them to come out,"
he added; and he lay back with his head against a stone and sighted the
telescope on a dizzy point, about which buzzards were circling.

"There is just one bush of rhododendron up there," he went on. "I saw
it looking down from the Point last spring. I imagine it must blossom
earlier than that across there on Bee Rock, being always in the sun.
No, it's not budding yet," he added, with his eye to the glass.

"You see that ledge just to the left? I dropped a big rock from the
Point square on a rattler who was sunning himself there last spring. I
can see a foothold all the way up the cliff. It can be done," he
concluded, in a tone that made me turn sharply upon him.

"Do you really mean to climb up there?" I asked, harshly.

"If it blossoms first up there--I'll get it where it blooms first." In
a moment I was angry and half sick with suspicion, for I knew his
obstinacy; and then began what I am half ashamed to tell.

Every day thereafter Grayson took that glass with him, and I went along
to humor him. I watched Bee Rock, and he that one bush at the throat
of the peak--neither of us talking over the matter again. It was
uncanny, that rivalry--sun and wind in one spot, sun and wind in
another--Nature herself casting the fate of a half-crazed fool with a
flower. It was utterly absurd, but I got nervous over
it--apprehensive, dismal.

A week later it rained for two days, and the water was high. The next
day the sun shone, and that afternoon Grayson smiled, looking through
the glass, and handed it to me. I knew what I should