think of wasting it on me."

But Jeff had recovered his sad composure. "I'd like to go with you, Miss
Mayfield. It's the last time, you know," he added simply.

Miss Mayfield did not reply. It was a tacit assent, however, although
she moved somewhat stiffly at his side as they walked towards the door.
Quite convinced that Jeff's resolution came from his pecuniary troubles,
Miss Mayfield was wondering if she had not better assure him of his
security from further annoyance from Dodd. Wonderful complexity of
female intellect! she was a little hurt at his ingratitude to her for
a kindness he could not possibly have known. Miss Mayfield felt that
in some way she was unjustly treated. How many of our miserable sex,
incapable of divination, have been crushed under that unreasonable
feminine reproof, "You ought to have known!"

The afternoon sun was indeed shining brightly as they stepped out before
the bleak angle of the "Half-way House"; but it failed to mitigate the
habitually practical austerity of the mountain breeze--a fact which Miss
Mayfield had never before noticed. The house was certainly bleak and
exposed; the site by no means a poetical one. She wondered if she had
not put a romance into it, and perhaps even into the man beside her,
which did not belong to either. It was a moment of dangerous doubt.

"I don't know but that you're right, Mr. Jeff," she said finally, as
they faced the hill, and began the ascent together. "This place is a
little queer, and bleak, and--unattractive."

"Yes, miss," said Jeff, with direct simplicity, "I've always wondered
what you saw in it to make you content to stay, when it would be so much
prettier, and more suitable for you at the 'Summit.'"

Miss Mayfield bit her lip, and was silent. After a few moments' climbing
she said, almost pettishly, "Where is this famous 'Summit'?"

Jeff stopped. They had reached the top of the hill. He pointed across
an olive-green chasm to a higher level, where, basking in the declining
sun, clustered the long rambling outbuildings around the white blinking
facade of the "Summit House." Framed in pines and hemlocks, tender with
soft gray shadows, and nestling beyond a foreground of cultivated slope,
it was a charming rustic picture.

Miss Mayfield's quick eye took in its details. Her quick intellect
took in something else. She had seated herself on the road-bank, and,
clasping her knees between her locked fingers, she suddenly looked up
at Jeff. "