The friends strolled away up the beach for their final talk, and at length Hilland came back in a somewhat pensive but very complacent mood. Grace looked at him anxiously, but his first sentences reassured her. "Well," he exclaimed, "if Graham is odd, he's certainly the best and most sensible fellow that ever lived, and the most steadfast of friends. Here we've been separated for years, and yet, for any change in his attitude toward me, we might have parted overnight at the university. He was as badly smitten by the girl I love as a man of his temperament could be; but on learning the facts he recognizes the situation with a quiet good taste which leaves nothing to be desired. He made it perfectly clear to me that travel for the present was only a broader and more effective way of continuing his career as a student, and that when tired of wandering he can go back to books with a larger knowledge of how to use them. One thing he has made clearer still--if we do not see each other for ten years, he will come back the same stanch friend." "I think you are right, Warren. He certainly has won my entire respect." "I'm glad he didn't win anything more, sweetheart." "That ceased to be possible long before he came, but I--I wish he had known it," was her hesitating response, as she pushed Hilland's hair back from his heated brow. "Nonsense, you romantic little woman! You imagine he has gone away with a great gaping wound in his heart. Graham is the last man in the world for that kind of thing, and no one would smile more broadly than he, did he know of your gentle solicitude." Grace was silent a moment, and then stole away to her father's side. The next tidings they had of Graham was a letter dated among the fiords and mountains of Norway. At times no snowy peak in that wintry land seemed more shadowy or remote to Grace than he. Again, while passing to and fro between their own and Mrs. Mayburn's cottage in the autumn, she would see him, with almost the vividness of life, deathly pale as when he leaned against the apple-tree at their well-remembered interview. CHAPTER XVI THE CLOUD IN THE SOUTH