After dinner, a meal at which he ate little and was well content to satisfy the hunger of his soul by the road of the eye, Smith went out to the portico to smoke. The most gorgeous of mountain sunsets was painting itself upon the sky over the western Timanyonis, but he had no eyes for natural grandeurs, and no ears for any sound save one--the footstep he was listening for. It came at length, and he tried to look as tired as he had been when the colonel made him close his desk and leave the office; tried and apparently succeeded. "You poor, broken-down Samson, carrying all the brazen gates of the money-Philistines on your shoulders! You had to come to us at last, didn't you? Let me be your Delilah and fix that chair so that it will be really comfortable." She said it only half mockingly, and he forgave the sarcasm when she arranged some of the hammock pillows in the easiest of the porch chairs and made him bury himself luxuriously in them. Still holding the idea, brought over from that afternoon of the name questioning, that she had in some way discovered his true identity, Smith was watching narrowly for danger-signals when he thanked her and said: "You say it just as it is. I had to come. But you could never be anybody's Delilah, could you? She was a betrayer, if you recollect." He made the suggestion purposely, but it was wholly ignored, and there was no guile in the slate-gray eyes. "You mean that you didn't want to come?" "No; not that. I have wanted to come every time your father has asked me. But there are reasons--good reasons--why I shouldn't be here." If she knew any of the reasons she made no sign. She was sitting in the hammock and touching one slippered toe to the flagstones for the swinging push. From Smith's point of view she had for a background the gorgeous sunset, but he could not see the more distant glories. "We owe you much, and we are going to owe you more," she said. "You mustn't think that we don't appreciate you at your full value. Colonel-daddy thinks you are the most wonderful somebody that ever lived, and so do a lot of the others." "And you?" he couldn't resist saying. "I'm just plain ashamed--for the way I treated you when you were here before. I've been eating humble-pie ever since." Smith breathed freer. Nobody but a most consummate actress could have simulated her frank sincerity. He had jumped too quickly to the small sum-in-addition conclusion. She did _not_ know the story of the absconding bank cashier. "I don't know why you should feel that way," he said, eager, now, to run where he had before been afraid to walk. "_I_ do. And I believe you wanted to shame me. I believe you gave up your place at the dam and took hold with daddy more to show me what an inconsequent little idiot I was than for any other reason. Didn't you, really?" He laughed in quiet ecstasy at this newest and most adorable of the moods.