Left to herself, Olive tramped home as if the seven-league boots had been upon her feet. Once at home, for some reason only known to womankind, she elected to sweep and dust the library with her own hands, and then to scour the brasses of the fireplace. Half through the second operation, though, she hesitated, paused, stopped short and threw aside her cloth and pinafore. Leaving them for the maids to discover and gather up at will, she went to her room, arrayed herself immaculately and quite regardless of the weather, and once more sallied out in search of Reed. While she was going up the Opdyke stairs, however, she suddenly became aware that she had nothing to say to him which would account for her suddenly renewed desire for his society. Accordingly, she talked of Brenton till Reed's soul was weary. Then, with a sudden flounce, she brought the talk around to Reed himself. "How many mines have you added to your list, to-day?" she asked him. Reed heaved a short sigh of relief, not out of egotism, but merely to be freed from further talk concerning Brenton. "Only one." "That's unusual. Still, I am rather glad it happens so. Ramsdell is convinced that you are working too hard, in this impossible weather." "Ramsdell is a chronic grumbler," Reed said disloyally. "I'm all right, Olive." She bent forward, her elbows on her knees, and stared down at him intently. "I'm not too sure of that, Reed. You are growing thin, and you look tired. No wonder, from what Mr. Duncan has told us. Is it quite worth while, though?" "It is." "But why?" she urged, with sudden recklessness of any pain her insistence might be causing him. He reddened. "Let's leave the dead past out of it, Olive. What's the use of going over the old ground again? You know my one ambition is to make whatever is left of my life a gift worth while." "Gift?" she queried steadily. "To whom, Reed?" "Its Creator, when the time comes," he answered, with the slow difficulty with which a strong man always touches such a theme. "Who else?" His sudden question, answering as it did to her own thoughts, astounded her. Her face flushed, lighted, filled itself with a dazzling radiance which, for the moment, Reed was powerless to interpret. For just that single moment, Olive caught in her breath and held it. Then,-- "Why, to me," she answered simply. "Reed dear, you have made it wonderfully well worth the asking. May I have it for my very own?" Fifteen minutes later on, Ramsdell came up the stairs. When he had gone down them stealthily and tiptoed through the lower hall, he wiped his eyes, then blew his nose in raucous triumph. "The one thing I 'ave halways 'oped would 'appen!" he said impressively. Four days afterward, Brenton came home again, came straight from the burial service on the country hillside to take up his old life in the wifeless home. As a matter of course, his first evening he spent with Opdyke.