"If--if only we could see you down there!" she sobbed. "You will, part of the time, with your glasses. And you'll be sure to see the flash of some of my shots. That's all that I'm worrying about--you'll be skirting along the canyon rim. Promise me you'll not go near the edge except where the footing is perfectly safe." "Yes, Dear. I shall have Thomas to remind me to be careful. But you?" "I shall have the thought of you both to keep me from being rash. Remember that." "You will not be rash, I know," she answered, smiling up at him bravely. "You will go and come back to us soon. Now kiss me and Thomas. I shall not detain you from your work." "Spoken like my partner," he quietly praised her. Both by tone and manner he was plainly seeking to ease the parting to the calmness of an ordinary farewell. His wife responded to this, outwardly at least. Not so Isobel. From the moment he had turned to Genevieve, the girl had betrayed a rapidly increasing agitation. He went to kiss his baby, who had fallen asleep during the last half mile of the trip and lay sprawled in the shade of a bowlder. As he came back, Genevieve lingered beside the child, as if half fearful of watching her husband begin his dizzy descent of the rope. Isobel was standing close to the verge, her bosom heaving with quick-drawn breaths, her excited face flushing and paling in rapid alternation. Blake had pulled on his left glove, but had kept his right hand bare for her. As he held it out he looked up from the taut rope at his feet and saw her excessively agitated face. [Illustration: "You have something to tell me--your voice--your eyes--"] "Why, Miss Chuckie!" he remonstrated, "you're not going to break down now. You see how Jenny takes it. There's nothing to fear." "Oh, but, Tom!" she panted, "you--you don't understand! you don't know! It's not merely the danger! It's the dreadful thought that if you--if you should not--come back--and I hadn't told you!" "Told me?" he echoed in hushed wonderment as her anguished soul looked out at him through her wide eyes and he sensed the first vague foreshadowing of the truth. "You have something to tell me--your voice!--your eyes!--" "You see it! You know me!" she gasped, and she flung herself into his arms. Straining herself to him in half frantic ecstasy, she murmured in a broken whisper: "Yes! I am--am Belle! It is wicked and selfish to tell you; but to have you go down there without first--I could not bear it! Yet I--I shall not drag you down--disgrace you. Never that! I'll go away!... Oh, Tom! dear Tom!" He had stood dumfounded by the revelation of her identity. At first he could not speak; hardly could he think. His eyes stared into hers with a dazed look. But before she could finish her impassioned declaration of self-abnegation he roused from his bewilderment, and his great arms closed about her quivering body. He crushed her to him and pressed his lips upon her white forehead.