She gave a throaty laugh, crying, "I might have known!" for answer, and he led on, stopping to assist her when the way was broken or unusually steep, and she, less accustomed but throbbing with the joy of it, followed. They reached an irregular "bench" of the mountain, and rested there on a great boulder. Below them lay the ranch amid its little hills, dust-of-gold in hue. "I have dreamed countless times of trailing this path with you," he said. "Then you have exhausted the best of the experience already. What equals a dream? Doesn't it exceed all possible fact?" "I think you know very well," he answered, "that this is more to me than any dream." An eagle lifted from a tree near at hand and sailed away with confidence, the master of the air. "I don't wonder men die trying to imitate him," breathed Kate, wrapt in the splendor of his flight. "They are the little brothers of Icarus." "I always hope," replied Wander, "when I hear of an aviator who has been killed, that he has had at least one perfect flight, when he soared as high as he wished and saw and felt all that a man in his circumstances could. Since he has had to pay so great a price, I want him to have had full value." "It's a fine thing to be willing to pay the price," mused Kate. "If you can face whatever-gods-there-be and say, 'I've had my adventure. What's due?' you're pretty well done with fears and flurries." "Wise one!" laughed Wander. "What do you know about paying?" "You think I don't know!" she cried. Then she flushed and drew back. "The last folly of the braggart is to boast of misfortune," she said. "But, really, I have paid, if missing some precious things that might have been mine is a payment for pride and wilfullness." "I hope you haven't missed very much, then,--not anything that you'll be regretting in the years to come." "Oh, regret is never going to be a specialty of mine," declared Kate. "To-morrow's the chance! I shall never be able to do much with yesterday, no matter how wise I become." "Right you are!" said Wander sharply. "The only thing is that you don't know quite the full bearing of your remark--and I do." She laughed sympathetically. "Truth is truth," she said. "Yes." He hung over the obvious aphorism boyishly. "Yes, truth is truth, no matter who utters it." "Thanks, kind sir." "Oh, I was thinking of the excellent Clarinda Hays. I listened to your conversation this morning and it seemed to me that she was giving you about all the truth you could find bins for. I couldn't help but take it in, it was so complacently offered. But Clarinda was getting her 'sacred feelings' mixed up with the truth. However, I suppose there is an essential truth about sacred feelings even when they're founded on an error. I surmised that you were holding back vastly more than you were saying. Now that we 're pretty well toward a mountain-top, with nobody listening, you might tell me what you _were_ thinking."