It was with a sigh of relief that the climbers rested and faced round to see the extent of their conquest. The whole world far beneath them was misty, ardent, gorgeous in the glamour of evening. Kingston and Isabel made their way to the ruins of the old cairn that had sent northward the news of many centuries. Among the scattered, rough-hewn boulders they settled themselves for an interval of repose in achievement. Behind them rose the ruined wall of the beacon tower that had talked, in its day, of Queen Jane and Queen Mary, of the Armada’s coming, and the passing of the Tudors. Before them, unrolled at their feet like a map, two thousand feet below, was all the splendour of the earth, phantasmal and glorified--tiny towns, and the worm-like track of great rivers, the minute tessellation of meadows, and the dim velvet of wide forests. The whole air, before them and beneath, was a-tremble with motes of gold. Gold filled and pervaded the atmosphere, confounding detail in a haze of glitter, and softening the great dazzling stretches of the western sea into an imperial harmony with the golden heaven and the golden earth. Kingston Darnley looked out across the glowing mystery beneath him. Rest, profound and eternal, seemed to be enveloping him. In reality, the very foundations of his nature were stirred and stirring. Insensibly, through the heat and worry of the foregoing days, his life had been growing ripe for a great upheaval. Slowly the tormenting desires, the incessant, unacknowledged hunger, the uneasy, restless, emotional uncertainty, the strenuous nourishment of artificial feelings, had all combined to bring his restless unhappiness to a head. Through unacknowledged storm and secret stress he had come at last to that deceptive calm which precedes the breaking up of the soul’s settled weather--the discharge of the soul’s accumulated electricity in a devastating nerve-cyclone. To-day his endurance of himself and his own forced contentment had touched its limit. Gundred had given him the last least touch that was needed to destroy the perilous equilibrium of his mood. Unconsciously he was waiting, in a breathless interval of suspense, for the crash of thunder that was to precipitate the crisis, and clear the air of all its unhealthy restraints.