He was faintly flushed with sleep and his voice was stronger and steadier. “I am ashamed,” he said. “I have slept away my one day with you. I had concentrated for so long on the single purpose of bringing Aleck’s message to you that, once it was done, everything seemed to be done. I sank into that sleep as if it were a bottomless pit. I must go back to-night. My mother--my people--You see, I spent only a day with them.” “You must go,” said Ginger. “You were good--oh, you were _good_ to come!” They stood then without talking, looking at each other, gravely. They seemed to be groping toward each other through the mists of grief and tragedy and strangeness which encompassed them. The little scene had--and would always have in their memories--a lovely and lyric quality. It was a fresh-washed world; the hills, the roads, the trails, the _chaparral_ were a clean and shining bronze; the distant alfalfa fields were emerald counterpanes and the _toyon_ berries, freed from the last stubborn summer dust, were little shouts of color. He passed a hand across his troubled eyes. “There is so much to tell you.... Every day, every hour, things grow clearer; I remember more and more. But I will write to you. I will write you everything.” “I don’t know, I can’t explain--” Ginger was whispering again--“but it almost seems as if you’d brought Aleck back to me. I can never see him again, but--it’s different, somehow. That dreadful, black, _lost_ feeling is gone. I won’t wear black any more; Aleck hated black. And I’m going to build that bridge, as he planned to build it, of stone, and--and put his name on it. It’s--all I can do for him.” His tired eyes lighted. “Will you let me share it with you--let me design it? I do that sort of thing, you know. I should love helping you with Aleck’s bridge.” His voice was kindling to warmth now. “A bridge--there could be nothing better for a memorial.” He fumbled in his pocket and brought out a notebook and pencil. “Shall we go a little nearer? I’ll make just a rough sketch of the situation.” They walked on. The cousin came to the edge of the veranda and called a warning; there was very little time. Dean Wolcott frowned and kept steadily on, Ginger walking beside him in her strange new silence. He did not speak again until he had made the small, unsteady sketch on a leaf of his notebook. Then he came a little closer to her, peering at her through the fading light. The sun had gone and the brief afterglow was going. “I will send the design as soon as I am sure of doing it decently--within a few weeks, I hope.” It was as if he were seeing her--_her_--not merely the person to whom with incredible difficulty and delay he had delivered a message. “And after a while, when I am--myself--may I come again?” His voice was huskily eager. “May I come back? I want to know Aleck’s country; I want to know Aleck’s--_you_.”