Her mind echoed it when he had gone. Yes, a rest. She looked up at Virginia, who had entered softly. Her face still shone with the thought of rest and release, and she smiled up at the girl, who had laid a cool hand on her flushing cheek, and now regarded her with devouring eyes. She stood so a moment, then knelt to peer at the wasted face. She looked a long time without speaking, looked shrewdly and, at last, accusingly. "What is it, dearest? I saw it in your face yesterday. What is it I see? Something has frightened you--beaten you." The other smiled protestingly, chidingly, with a raised finger; but the girl was not to be appeased. "You won't tell me, Nell; I know you; you'll keep it in. But, oh, dearest!" She suddenly gathered the sick woman into her strong young arms, raising her head from the pillow, holding the fevered face to her breast, pressing her own cool cheek to the hot brow. "Dearest dear, let me in. Trust me. Tell me where it hurts. Let me mother you." "There, there, dear! Everything is all right. Lay me down again and be easy in that mind of yours." But once more on the pillow she had to endure again the girl's accusing eyes. "Nell, someone hasn't loved you enough. That's what I feel. Who is it?" "Nonsense! You're only worried because I'm a little run down. Everyone loves me enough--all I deserve. There, dear, I think I can rest." The girl kissed her shut eyes, and went out, after a long, doubting look. The sick woman raised her arms once, like a child who would be taken, but they fell back, and she painfully laughed the old low laugh of secrecy. She mused on her brother's words. "A little rest." Yes, a rest. "Yet a little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to sleep." She remembered now that it would come to her in the shelter of those hills, perhaps in that room to which her thoughts had flown so many times, where she had seen the awakening man in the sleeping boy, and caught misty shadowings of the portent he bore for her. Her eyes might fall before his now, but they need not fall before the eyes of his mother. CHAPTER XXVII THE HILLS OF REST Ben Crider waited for them on the station platform at Pagosa. He was excited to a point of feverish unrest until the train warned its way out of the last canyon. Then, by a masterful effort, he became elaborately nonchalant. That train had brought Ewing back to him, but he constrained himself to handle the occasion as one rising hardly to common levels. He would have considered any other demeanor "shameless."