He handed her into the tonneau of the car, and tucked the robe about her. She gave his hand a hearty friendly shake, for she was much too wise and too tired for sentiment. “Don’t you worry about Ora,” she said. “Custer is with her and she has the drawing-room, and is probably sound asleep at this moment. It must be very restful to get a tragic love affair off your chest.” And then the car rolled off and she fell asleep at once. PART III PART III They stood together in the dawn, the blue dawn of Montana. Silver stars were winking dimly in the silver sky, clear save above the glittering peaks of the distant range, which reflected the blue of a bank of clouds above. And all the vast and snowy expanse was blue; and the snow on the pine trees of the forest. No one stirred in the two camps, not abroad at least; and even the shacks and larger buildings built with as little regard for beauty were transformed and glorified by the white splendour of winter. On the crest of Perch of the Devil was a long gracefully built bungalow, also heavily laden with snow, and between the posts of its verandah hung icicles, iridescent blue in the dawn. A small lawn had been cultivated, and they leaned over the gate of the fence that surrounded it, not wrapped in one buffalo robe, but in heavy automobile coats, their heads protected from the intense cold by fur caps. But they stood close together, and even a passing stranger would have known that there was harmony between them. Both were looking at the cold loveliness of the dawn and admiring it subconsciously, and both were thinking of other things. Gregory was visualising a ranch he had bought not long since near those mountains, and the wire gold but a few feet below the surface, found a fortnight ago while ditching. He had his gold mine at last, but it merely would hasten his grooming for the millionaire brotherhood, and had given him none of the exultant ecstasy he had dreamed of in the days before he had opened Perch of the Devil. The gold mine was not in his hill! Only the sharp, cool, calculating business wing of his brain appreciated it. The mine beneath his feet was still the object of his deep affections. And sometimes, down in the depths of that mine (never above ground), he sat alone for a few moments and thought of Ora. He had forced her out of his mind when she went out of his life, but nothing could dislodge her from his ivory tower, although in time to come she might gather dust for years on end. For months after she married Valdobia she seemed to have taken his memory to Rome with her; but she brought it back in time.