sights."

"I suppose so," she answered, rather listlessly. "We shall get a glimpse
of a new country, but that will be all. On the steamers we'll meet much
the kind of people we are accustomed to, and no doubt we'll stay at
hotels built especially for luxurious tourists. You see, we take our
usual environment along with us."

"But isn't that what you like?"

"I don't know; perhaps it ought to be." Muriel paused and looked up at
him with candid eyes. "You hinted that we had given you a new and wider
outlook--or brought back the one you used to have, which is what you must
have meant. You don't seem to realize that you have done much the same
thing to me."

"I'm not sure I understand."

"It shouldn't be difficult. You know the kind of people I have hitherto
met, and how we spend our time in a round of amusements that lead to
nothing, with all that could jar on one carefully kept away. This is the
first time I've come into touch with strenuous, normal life."

"And it doesn't seem to have frightened you?"

"No," she said with a smile; "I'm not in the least afraid--why should I
be? I must have more courage than you think, but does one need a great
deal of it to live here?"

He looked at her in grave admiration. There was a hint of pride in her
pose, and her eyes were calm.

"I believe if ever a time of stress came, you wouldn't shrink. But this
is a pretty hard and lonely country, especially in winter."

Muriel changed the subject.

"For all that, I feel you are right in staying, Cyril. Have you written
to your people?"

Prescott felt embarrassed and guilty, as he generally did when, in
confidential moments, she called him by Jernyngham's name. Somehow he
could not imagine her saying Jack.

"No," he rejoined slowly. "Of course, they must be written to."

Muriel did not answer. The turn their conversation had taken had filled
her with a vague unrest as she looked back at the life she had led. Three
or four years ago it had seemed filled with glamour and excitement, and
she had entered on its pleasures with eager zest, but of late she had
begun to find them wearisome. They no longer satisfied her. If this were
the result of a few years' experience, what would she feel when she had
grown jaded with time and everything was stale? Then her glimpse of the
simple, healthful western life had come as a revelation. It was real, a
bracing struggle, in which no effort was wasted but produced tangible
results: broad str