At last she was safe beside him. In another moment he was up and helped her to her feet. They stood looking towards the mountain top. The dun cloud stalking now with trailing skirts in the direction of the snow-peaks, hurled back a parting threat. "It was the pine tree," she exclaimed. "It was struck. And, see! It has carried down most of that chimney. Our staircase is completely wrecked." Tisdale was silent. Her glance came back to him. A sudden emotion stirred her face. Then all the conservatism dropped from her like a discarded cloak, and he felt her intrepid spirit respond to his own. Now she understood that moment in the basin; she knew it had been supreme; she was great enough to see there was nothing to forgive. "You were right," she said, and her voice broke in those steadying pauses that carried more expression than any words. "Fate was with us again. But I owe--my life--to you." "Sometime," he answered slowly, smiling a little, "not now, not here, I am going to hold you to the debt. And when I do, you are going to pay me--in full." The beautiful color, that was like the pink of coral, flamed and went in her face. "We must hurry back to the team," she said and turned to finish the descent to the bench. "Horses are always so nervous in an electrical storm." Then suddenly, as Tisdale pushed by to help her in a difficult place, she stopped. "How strange!" she exclaimed. "That terrible curtain has lifted from the desert. It threatened a deluge any minute, and now it is moving off without a drop of rain." "That's so," he replied. "A cross current of wind has turned it up the Columbia. But the rain is there; it is streaming along those Chelan summits in a downpour." "And look!" she cried, after a moment. "A double rainbow! See how it spans the Wenatchee! It's a promise." And the turquoise lights shone once more in her eyes. "Here in this desert, at last, I may come to my 'pot of gold.'" "You mean," responded Tisdale, "now you have seen the spring, Weatherbee's project seems possible to you. Well, I have reconsidered, too. I shall not outbid you. That would favor Mrs. Weatherbee too much. And my interests are going to keep me in Alaska indefinitely. I should be obliged to leave the plans in the hands of a manager, and I had rather trust them to you." Miss Armitage did not answer directly. She was watching the arch, painted higher now, less brilliantly, on the lifting film. The light had gone out of her face. All the bench was in shadow; in the valley below a twilight indistinctness had fallen. Then suddenly once more Cerberus stood forth like a beast of brass. She shivered. "It isn't possible," she said. "It isn't possible. Even if I dared--for David's sake--to assume the responsibility, I haven't the money to carry the project through." Tisdale stopped and swung around. They had reached the flat rock under the sentinel pine tree. "Did you know David Weatherbee?" he asked.