"Then you're mine!" he said with a clutch upon her wrist, a masterful intensity of passion in his eyes. "Don't--please don't!" she said, "they will see you." "I don't care if they do!" he exultingly said; then his face darkened. "But perhaps you are ashamed of me?" "Oh, no, no--only----" "I couldn't blame you if you were," he said bitterly. "I'm only a poor devil of a mountaineer, not fit to sit here beside you." "Tell me about yourself," she hastened to say. "What have you been doing all these years?" She was determined to turn him from his savage arraignment of himself. "It won't amount to much in your eyes. It isn't worth as much to me as I thought it was going to be. When I found King had your promise--I hit the trail and I didn't care where it led, so it didn't double on itself. I didn't want to see or hear anything of you again. What became of King? Why did you turn him loose?" Her eyelids fell to shut out his gaze. "Well--after your visit I couldn't find courage to fulfill my promise--and so I asked him to release me--and he did--he was very kind." "He couldn't do anything else." "Go on with your story," she said hurriedly. As they sat thus in the corner of the little sitting room, the pupils and guests of the institution came and went from the cloak rooms, eyeing the intent couple with smiling and curious glances. Who could that dark, handsome young man be who held Miss Yardwell with his glittering eyes? The girls found something very interesting in his bronzed skin and in the big black hat which he held in his hands. On his part Harold did not care--he scarcely noticed these figures. Their whispers were as unimportant as the sound of aspen leaves, their footfalls as little to be heeded as those of rabbits on the pine needles of his camp. Before him sat the one human being in the world who could command him and she was absorbed in interest of his story. He grew to a tense, swift, eager narration as he went on. It pleased him to see her glow with interest and enthusiasm over the sights and sounds of the wild country. At last he ended. "And so--I feel as though I could settle down--if I only had you. The trail got lonesome that last year--I didn't suppose it would--but it did. After three years of it I was glad to get back to my old friends, the Reynolds. I thought of you every day--but I didn't listen to hear you sing, because I thought you were King's wife--I didn't want to hear about you ever--but that's all past now--I am here and you are here. Will you go back to the mountains with me this time?" She looked away. "Come and see me to-morrow, I must think of this. It is so hard to decide--our lives are so different----" She arose abruptly. "I must go now. Come into the concert, I'm going to sing." She glanced at him in a sad, half-smiling way. "I can't sing If I Were a Voice for you, but perhaps you'll like my aria better."