"Here father used to walk up and down reading in his little books; seems like I can hear his voice now. Sometimes he would look off over the valley below us there and repeat parts by heart. Isn't it beautiful here, David?" "Heavenly beautiful!" "I'm glad we never came here before." "Why, dearest?" "Because." She hesitated with parted lips, and cheeks flushed from the climb. David stood with bared head. He felt as if he were in a cathedral. "And why because?" he asked again. "For now we bring just happiness with us. We're not troubled or wondering about anything. No sorrow comes with us. In our hearts we are sure--sure--" She paused again and lifted her eyes to his. "Sure that all is right when we belong to each other--this way?" "Yes, sure! Oh, David, sure--sure!" She threw her arms about his neck and drew his face down to hers. "It's even a greater happiness than when he used to carry me in his arms here. There's no sorrow near us. It's all far away." Thus, sometimes she would throw off all the habitual reserve of her manner and open her heart to him, following the rich impulses of her nature to their glorious revelation. "Now, David, sit here and play; play your flute as you did that first time when I learned who made the music that I thought must be the 'Voices,' that time I climbed up to see." They sat under the great cedars on a bank of moss, and David took the flute from her hand, smiling as he thought of that moment when he had stood among the blossoming laurel and watched her as she moved about his cabin, the day before his hurt, and how she had kissed it. "I used to sit here like this." She bent forward and rested her head on his knee. She had a way of putting her two hands together as a child is taught to hold them in prayer and placing them beneath her cheek; and so she waited while David paused, his hand on her hair, and his eyes fixed on the sea of hilltops where they melted into the sky,--a mysterious, undulating line of the faintest blue, seen through the arching branches above, and the swaying hemlocks on either side, and over the tops of a hundred varieties of pines and deciduous trees beneath them, all down the long slope up which they had climbed. Thus they waited, until she lifted her head and looked into his eyes questioningly. He bent forward and kissed her lips and then lifted the flute to his own--but again paused. "What are you thinking now, David?" she asked. "So you really thought it was the 'Voices'? What was their message, Cassandra?" "I couldn't make it out then, but I thought of this place and of father, and it was all at once like as if he would make me know something, and I prayed God would he lead me to understand was it a message or not. So that was the way I kept on following--until I--" "You came to me, dear?" "Yes." "And what did you think the interpretation was then?" "Yes, it was you--you, David. It was love--and hope--and gladness--everything, everything--" "Go on."