As they sat about their camp fire that evening Ewing was struck by a certain view he caught of her. She sat in shadow on a stool at the foot of a towering hemlock, and once when he rose to stir the waning fire a flame shot up from a half-burned log, with a volley of sparks that fell back in a golden rain. He glanced over to be sure that she escaped these, and saw her sharply revealed in the sudden light, unconscious of it, unaroused by the crackling explosion. She was staring fixedly into the darkness, her body relaxed, her hands half clasped, her head, the profile toward him, leaning wearily against the tree. Before this background she seemed frail again, her face pallid under the dark of her hair and against the rough, ruddy brown of the tree bole, her whole body contrasting in its fragile lines with the tree's strength--human weakness showing starkly against the vigor of the woods. To dull the sudden wanting of his heart for her he walked off alone over the path that bordered the lake, to reduce the amazing actuality of things, if he could, to proportions seemly with normal life. But the lake was a mirror of enchantment, the booming of an owl was a magic portent, the shadowed wall of granite was a turreted castle of mysteries, vague in the starlight, and the very stars themselves huddled down on him excitingly. He was in a world of the unreal, and must do an unreal thing. He stumbled blindly back to camp. He was surprised to find Mrs. Laithe as he had left her, still drooping against the rough-barked tree, weak, submissive, overborne. He touched her arm gently to recall her from some troubled distance. She looked at him with eyes unseeing at first. "Isn't it bedtime?" he suggested. She smiled and stood up to shrug away the spell of her dreaming. She spoke with such clear strength of tone that he was at once reassured of her vigor. "Yes, it's sleeping time--in a moment. I haven't said much to you, but there's really little to say. You feel that you must go?" "How could I stay here--after that?" She repressed a sudden spasm of wild, weeping laughter that threatened to overcome her. "And you'll not come back?" She waited breathless. "There isn't much chance of it." "You dear, dear fool!" was on her lips, but she held back the words and said very quietly: "Go out, then, and live as you must. Only don't let life cow you. Don't ever fear that living is intricate or hard or tragic--a thing to be gone about warily. The wary people make the same mistakes as the careless ones, and feel them ten times more. Don't be afraid to dream--afraid to believe. I'm glad I've dreamed every dream of mine--false or true. Never be afraid to want." She turned half away as if to go, but halted, and he thought she had grown suddenly weak. "You're going----" "To-morrow, I'd thought--the sooner the better." "Ah, but that's so soon. Can't we have one more day here? One more day to think of it?"