There were two others to whom the voice of the rapids came clearly that night as they sat on the edge of the judge's lawn. Belding was very much in love. Months ago he perceived that Elsie was designed to be some man's comrade, and for months he had been constantly aware of an oval face and dark brown eyes. He saw them whenever he peered through an instrument. But the only sign Elsie had given him was the spontaneous kinship of youth with youth. At the garden party there was little opportunity for talk and he had eagerly accepted the judge's suggestion to spend the evening with them. Now Elsie was beside him at the water's edge. "I was up at the works again, with father, the other day. Aren't they wonderful?" she said, after a long pause. "Perhaps--I don't often think of them that way, though." "What a difference in two years!" "I suppose so." Belding was tired and he didn't want to talk shop. "I met Mr. Clark again, and he was charming." "Was he?" She laughed. "I gathered from you at the garden party that he was a woman hater." "Did I say that?" "Not exactly, but that he didn't care for women, he was too busy." "He never mentioned one to me, except his mother." "I can understand that," said Elsie very thoughtfully. Belding felt a little restless. "You seem very interested." "I am. I never met any one like him. He seems to be two men, or several all rolled into one. You admire him, don't you?" "Yes, tremendously, but he scares me a bit sometimes." "Why?" "I have wretched moments in which it seems that he is riding for a fall. Things are going so fast, too fast sometimes--and besides, I'm tired." She glanced at him swiftly, but in the glance he caught nothing of what he sought. "If you're tired," she said slowly, "what about Mr. Clark? He's carrying the whole thing, isn't he, as well as creating it? Is that his piano in the blockhouse?" The young man nodded. "What does he play?" "Nothing that I remember; he improvises. It rests him, I suppose." "Has he many friends?" "I don't know that he wants many." "Then he sits there alone in the evenings and plays to himself,--I wonder if it really is to himself? Don't you believe that somewhere there must be some one he is playing to, and that it's for some one he's doing all that's going on?" Elsie spoke a little breathlessly and her eyes were luminous. "How old is he?" "Perhaps between thirty-five and forty, I never asked--one doesn't ask him that sort of thing. He never struck me as being of any particular age." "But you're going to follow him always, aren't you, and help to see him through? He's following something too." "What's that?" said Belding a little stiffly. "His star." The girl's voice was very soft. "Perhaps he'll never reach it, but that doesn't matter, if he follows it." "Mr. Clark would differ with you there." "Would he, I don't know. Perhaps I understand him better than you do."