“That’s true,” admitted Edward. “Still, it’s more fun to disobey a notice board warning you off than to obey a notice board calling you on.” I am not sure that he really said this. If he did I do not think anyone heard him. After a second or two he realised at any rate that he might have said it and he thought, “Really, you know, I am quite clever. Only Emily is never there when I am clever. Nobody is on my side. There is nobody to think, ‘Well, by Jove, our hero is not so very unworthy of his Emily after all....’” The grotesque dance of the Ford car between the quiet trees began again. Back and forth, back and forth, along the climbing roads it toiled. Higher and higher. There were patches of old crusted snow beside the road now. The little meadows among the trees were extravagantly green. The very shadows were green. The earth opened before them. There was suddenly nothing at all between them and another world. The faces of the opposite mountains—El Capitan, Half Dome—were made gracious with Gothic curves. There were far mountains—red mountains, patterned with snow—to the east of the Half Dome. They were like still flames in the low red sunlight. Yosemite Valley was filling with blue shadow as the sun went down. The line of shadow climbed up the sheer cliffs like rising water and overflowed the tall shallow arches of the cliffs. Edward thought, “I can’t bear to be alone with this. One can’t be anything but alone in such an indecently enormous world. There is nothing that will ever come near enough to save me.... Unless Emily would come....” Avery Bird said, “The other party ought to be quite a short ways from here. They’d planned to wait for us before going down into the valley. Let’s all call Emily, let’s sing Emily all through the woods.” “Emily ... Emily ... Emily....” They moved along the shadowy road. The sunlight slipped from the brim of the lower cliffs across the valley. The brows of the mountains were still alight. “Listen,” said Rhoda, and Mr. Hope, listening to excess, stalled the engine by mistake. “Hurray.... Hurray....” It was a very small distant voice. There was a very small distant Emily framed in tall trees. It seemed to Edward that all the trees they had seen had been but an avenue leading to Emily. She was waving violently at them with both arms. She ran towards them. “A deer came and almost kissed me,” she shouted urgently as she ran. “We didn’t light the fire till now for fear of frightening it. The darling thing. We are going to have four fried eggs each. We bought all the eggs in the last town.” “I guess you got to admit now that London has nothing on this,” said Banner Hope. Leaning over a doubtful camp fire knelt Emily’s employer and his wife. Emily danced about them without dignity. “Isn’t it fine? Isn’t it fine? Soon it will be all starry above and we shall be just seeing each other’s nice faces and eating four fried eggs each.”