She was kneeling by the fire, frying-pan in hand, preparing the evening meal; and at regular intervals two big dew-drops trickled out from her lowered lashes and dropped upon her hand. Charles-Norton, abashed and puzzled, went about a while, making a great show of occupation, and pretending not to see. And then, suddenly, out of the corner of his eyes he noted the rag which she had wrapped about the handle of the frying-pan. It was not the usual rag. It was a filmy thing within which ran a color like a flame. Lordy--it was the scarf which, several weeks before, he had stolen one night from the girl on the veranda, in the inn above the valley, and which he had since forgotten in the clothes-bag that served him as pillow. He kept a prudent silence, and pretended not to see it, though vaguely tormented by the very menial service to which Dolly successively put that once radiant scarf. And Dolly said not a word about it. She went on with her little housekeeping routine very carefully and submissively, while now and again a tear oozed from her long lashes. But Charles-Norton felt vaguely now that the balance had swung, that he was fighting now at a terrible disadvantage. CHAPTER XVI Charles-Norton began to grow peevish. "Good Lord," he would growl, as he flew along the crest; "why can't she smile once, for a change, as I leave her in the morning; why can't she speed me away with a smile, instead of that look. Why can't she be happy in her own way down there, and let me be happy up here? Why, why, why?" He was passing just then a deep gorge, blue beneath him. From it his question reascended to him, tenuous and fluttering, like a lost bird on uncertain wings. "Why--why--why?" "She looks at me--as if I were a murderer. Just because I want to fly. Just because I have wings. Just because everything in me says, Fly! And I have to carry that look around with me all day long, just like a net, just like a net of crape. Dam!" "Dam!" said the profundities. Charles-Norton evidently had arrived at the self-pitying stage--which was a bad sign, if he only had known it; which showed a certain weakening of his moral fiber. He fought on, though. Resolutely he continued to refuse to notice the daily little black smudge upon Dolly's cheek. She was more submissive and dolorous than ever. She had made him, with blankets, a union-suit that buttoned ingeniously about the roots of his wings; he put it on every morning, but hid it behind a rock till night as soon as he was out of sight. But the very elements, the perversity of matter, seemed against Charles-Norton. "There's no more flour, Goosie," said Dolly one morning.