“It’s pretty damp on the water for you, ain’t it?” he interrupted, drawing her mackintosh closer about her shoulders. “This fog’s wet.” “Nobody ever catches cold, up here on the top of the world!” she disclaimed. “And it _isn’t_ fog. It’s just a little mountain mist. In another half-hour it will rise.” “Just the same,” he argued, “I wish you had come in a carriage, instead of bein’ on the water so early.” “A carriage!” she scoffed merrily. “_Where_ do you think you are? These,” pointing to the docked rowboats, canoes and launches clustering about them, “are the ‘carriages’ of the Adirondacks. Why, except for the white trunk-chariot steed at the Antlers, there probably isn’t a horse within three miles of here. It’s Venice all over again, in that. Aren’t you at _all_ glad to see me?” she continued, dropping her voice and noting the man’s puzzled, unenthusiastic mien. For an instant, some of the happy light ebbed in the eyes that had been so brimful of joyous welcome. Caleb roused himself with an impatient shake at his own seeming apathy. “Glad to see you!” he echoed. “_Glad?_ Well, say, you little girl, it’s the gladdest thing that’s happened to me since the day you left Granite. An’ I’d be just as glad even if it was in some worse place than a wet boat all stalled up with mist. Gee! But the tan makes you look prettier’n a whole picture album!” “Mrs. Hawarden says my hands are disgracefully brown,” said Desirée, the happiness running back to her eyes at his rough praise. “And my face is as black as an Arab’s, I suppose.” “It’s the prettiest between here an’ Granite, all right,” he declared stoutly. “Here, let me pull that sweater thing higher up around your throat. What a funny little _kid_ face you’ve got, anyhow, Dey!” He looked at her with frank delight. The girl’s head was bare; the mist clinging like frost crystals to her shimmering aura of hair. Out of a flushed, bronzed countenance glowed the wide, child-like eyes that Caleb had once declared were two sizes too big for her face--and in whose depths Caine had more poetically located “twin springs of hidden laughter.” It was _good_ to see her. And the man’s business cares, his social plans, his matrimonial campaign itself, faded into nothingness. He was here, by her side. That was enough. And doubly he realized how poignant had been the ache of aloneness at his heart, during every day of her absence. There was a new peace, an utter content, that enwrapped him now that he was once more beside her. He did not try to analyze the emotion. But he knew it mastered him as nothing else had ever done. He knew it; and, satisfied to look no farther ahead, he was glad.