Rod Norquay had quite clearly defined Mary Thorn as a given end. Sometimes in analytical mood he took stock of his feelings about her and marveled at the depth and intensity, the consistent urge of this desire. A flare of impatience would burn up. He would be angry with Mary awhile, then sorry for himself. It was, he held, a strange way for a woman to feel--to love a man, to admit frankly that he satisfied her ideal of a man, that her flesh yearned to his after the law of nature--yet to fear, to hold back from the decisive step because of---- What? Social differences? Rod dismissed them with a gesture. They existed, but they did not matter. What then? An unexplained reluctance to give up her freedom? Some undivulged ambition? A secret desire to try her own individual wings before they were clipped by marriage? "You have some queer ideas about the business of living," he said to her impatiently, one day. He had blazed a trail from the upper workings on Valdez to join the path that ran from the Granite Pool to Oliver Thorn's. He had made several journeys over that ridge before Mary went back to town, sometimes in the evening, sometimes of a Sunday afternoon. It was pleasant to see the momentary glow in her eyes when he came in. "I like you in mackinaw and calked boots, Rod," she said irrelevantly. "Are you going to make a profession of logging?" "I said you have some queer ideas about this business of living," he persisted. "No, you only think them queer," she said. "They're sound enough. I don't want to make a blunder." "You think marrying me might be a blunder?" he asked a little stiffly. "I don't want to marry anybody, Rod," she repeated, a statement that never failed to anger him. "Is it so important that one should marry?" "It's important to me," he said. "Are you the only one whose will or desire counts?" she inquired. "It isn't like you to take that position about anything." "Mary, Mary, you know what I mean," he exclaimed. "Life doesn't seem more than half-complete without you in the picture. When we were kids playing together we lived from day to day. But we can't do that now. I can't, anyway. I've either got to be sure of you, or give up all idea of you. All this stuff that seems to stick you--my people and money, and what they'll do to me in disapproval, and all that--it doesn't really amount to anything. If I didn't know how you feel about me I'd say it wasn't worth while combatting such fool impressions."