Dick went to his bed with a critical admission of the truth, and from any angle it appeared foolish. How had it all happened? He was not prone to be easy of heart. He had known the light, fleeting loves of boyhood, and could laugh at them; but they had been different to this. And it had come on him at a time when everything was at stake, and when his undivided thoughts and attention should have been centered on the Croix d'Or. He reviewed his situation, and scarcely knew why he had drifted into it, unless it had been through a desire to talk to some one who knew, as he knew, all that old life from which he had been, and would forever be, parted. Not that he regretted its easy scramble, and its plethora of civilized concomitants; for he loved the mountains, the streams, the open forests, and the physical struggles of the wild places; but--and he gave over reasoning, and knew that it was because of the charm of Miss Presby herself, and that he wanted her, and had hoped unconsciously. Sternly arraigning himself, he knew that he had no groundwork to hope, and nothing to offer, just then; that he must first win with the Croix d'Or, and that it was his first duty to win with that, and justify the confidence of the kindly old Sloan who backed him with hard dollars. He had not appreciated how much the daily meeting of Miss Presby meant to him until, on the following morning, and acting on his hardly reached resolution of the night before, he went up for what might be the last time. It was difficult to realize that the short summer of the altitudes was there in its splendid growth, and that it had opened before his unobserving eyes, passed from the tender green of spring to the deep-shaded depths of maturity, and that the wild flowers that carpeted the open slopes had made way for roses. Even the cross on the peak was different, and it came to him that he had not observed it in the weeks he had been climbing to the slope, but had always waited eagerly for the light of a woman's face. She came cantering up the trail, and waved a gay hand at him as she rounded the bend of the crag. There was a frank expectancy in her face--the expectancy of a pleasant hour's visit with a good comrade. He wondered, vaguely and with new scrutiny, if that were not all--just friendliness. They talked of nothing; but his usual bantering tone was gone, and, quick to observe, she divined that there had come to him a subtle change, not without perturbation. "You don't seem talkative to-day," she accused as he stood up, preparatory to going. "Have you finished work on your pipe line?" He flushed slightly under the bronze of his face at the question, it being thus brought home to him that he had used it as a pretext for continuing their meetings for more than two weeks after that task was completed and the pipemen scattered--perhaps working in some subway in New York by that time.